Today, I met with the head of a large public agency (10,000 employees) and we talked about managing his Board of Directors so that they are supportive of his vision.

"You need to engage them early in the process," I said. "Ask them questions. Enable them to own the direction."

He gave me a quizzical look. "They don't see eye-to-eye," he said. "How can I do that?"

"It's all about leverage," I replied. "You have two Board members who want to be seen as driving the direction. Leverage their desire to be perceived as leaders."

We talked about a strategy for doing that, for giving them a platform to articulate their visions for the organization.

Bill said: "Can you help facilitate this discussion?"

"I can, but I would prefer that you do it." I looked at him. "You've led a fighter squadron into battle. Surely you can manage this Board."

He hemmed and hawed.

"Can you envision how much more quickly you could implement your changes if the Board was fully behind them?"

Yes, he nodded.

"Can you envision these two Board members buying into your vision, once you buy into theirs?"

Yes.

"Do you think your visions are incompatible, or is it only in the details of execution you disagree?"

We're aligned overall, it's just in the details that we have some differences.

"That's pretty common," I said. "So what's the worse that could happen?"

Bill pushed back his chair from the table. "Certain Board members are loyal to certain groups," he said. "If I'm not careful, those groups could become too powerful."

"In my experience, power changes hands when there's a vacuum of leadership."

Bill nodded his head. "I see what you're driving at. I need to do this in order to get the organization aligned."

"Taking responsibility invariably means making a choice," I said. "If you've made the choice, then we can talk about the details of how to engage them."

I had a reunion with an old college friend of mine named Shaw. We’d been on many adventures together – exploring in Peru, hiking in Corsica, sailing in Maine. Unfortunately, we had only two days, and we had to settle for an adventure relatively close to Boston. We picked a canoe trip down the Saco River in New Hampshire.

We were shuttled to our put-in point by Dave, the garrulous owner of the canoe rental company. It was a hot June morning. Our wet bags contained rain gear, sleeping bags, tent, and enough food for our entire reunion class.

We pulled into the quick-moving silver waters of the Saco, with stately Mt. Washington sheathed in clouds above us. I jumped into the bow, Shaw into the stern. The bowman leads the boat. The stern’s job is to follow the bowman’s lead. This is important to know for what happened later.

We barreled along the river, navigating the Class II riffles with relative ease. There were many boulders to avoid, but the river’s currents were not too treacherous. The greatest danger was from trees, uprooted and tossed into the river by winter storms, sucking the currents underneath them.

We rounded a curve in the river. I looked ahead. The river’s pace quickened as the channel narrowed. Suddenly, I saw a major problem. A birch tree lay horizontally across the river between two rocks. “Tree,” I shouted. There was two feet of clearance beneath the tree. “We can make it.”

“No,” called Shaw. “Head for the beach. Beach!”

“We can make it!” I shouted. “Dig, dig!”

With my determination to go for it, and Shaw’s desire to exercise caution, the canoe responded accordingly. The stern swung around into the current, heading straight toward the tree. Scared of hitting the tree backwards, I executed a deep draw stroke and swung the bow in the right direction. But not enough. We came onto the tree sideways.

“Duck,” I shouted. We both flattened ourselves into the bottom of the canoe. I held my breath. The tree cleared my nose by inches. I listened for a scrape or a thump from the stern. Hearing none, I exhaled. We’d made it!

I stuck up my head and looked at Shaw, who burst out laughing. “That was classic!” he shouted. “A textbook example of what not to do!”

We high-fived and paddled to a sandy beach where we stretched our legs and replayed what had happened. “Our mistake is we didn’t work out our ground rules in advance,” I said. “We need a rule that if one of us wants to stop, we have to stop – no questions asked.”

“I agree,” said Shaw. “And when in doubt, revert to rule number one.”

We proceeded to navigate several more treacherous spots with no mishaps. Later, while cooking steaks over our campfire, I recounted for Shaw the hundreds of times I’d worked with teams and helped them develop their ground rules.

“It’s a key thing for effective teams to do,” I said. “And it’s interesting and ironic that we overlooked that crucial step.”

I spent yesterday afternoon coaching the CEO of a medical research institute in Boston. Tom is an affable, good-natured man. The institute he heads is a worldwide leader in brain research.

I had recently worked with the institute’s Board of Directors. They complained that the vision of the institute was “muddy.” They wanted more prominence given to clinical treatment rather than basic science. The board’s role was to raise money. “We can’t raise money if we don’t know the vision,” they told me.

Tom had heard the Board’s complaints. “I always seem to have the same argument with the Board,” he confided. “I don’t know if I’m not communicating well or what.”

I asked him if his leadership team was aligned around a shared vision for the institute. “Probably not,” he said. “They are each leaders in their scientific fields, and they collaborate on specific projects. But we don’t meet regularly as a group.”

 I asked him to describe his vision. “We’ve assembled the most talented group of scientists and clinicians in our field in the world. We have the leading people, we have the right processes and scientific approaches, and we have the leading facility. Any breakthroughs in our field are going to occur here. But we have to keep growing if we’re going to maintain our leadership.”

 I looked at him. “That’s a powerful vision,” I said. “Yet I’ve never heard you articulate it to the Board.”

 “I feel I need to listen to the Board,” Tom said.

 I reminded him of the derivation of the word “leader.” It comes from an Old English root word which means “to be out in front.”

“Like a scout,” Tom said.

“Yes,” I said. “The same root word also means to die.” 

“That makes sense,” he smiled. “The scout would be the first to get shot.”

Leaders can’t wait for others to articulate the vision, I told him. The leader has to ante up first. You’ve got to tell your leadership team and your Board your vision, and then let them respond. Some will take shots at it. But that will help you sharpen the vision and make it stronger.

“What if someone else has a stronger vision?” he asked. “I fear that another leader could emerge.”

“That's a small risk," I said. "The greater danger is that the institute will lose its focus if you don’t galvanize it with vision.”

 He looked at me. “Okay,” he said. “Where do we begin?”

 I sketched out a process. “Start with three facilitated meetings with your leadership team to hone the vision and related priorities. That would give you a plan to take back to the Board."

“That sounds good,” Tom said. “Thanks for coaching me on this!”