In Orbit

If you are a leader of an organization, a department, or a team of people, your job is to externalize the soul and mission of that people group. As a leader, if you have not put that into words then it only lives in you and not in others.

Unhealthy organizations and teams share the common characteristic of over dependence upon a single individual where everything related to direction, priority, strategy, and decision resides within that one leader.

When members of this kind of organization go asking about what to do or how to do something they say, “I don’t know, we better go ask our leader.”

Leaders will not be effective if they are the sun at the center of the solar system. Leaders must externalize the values and purpose of the organization and its various parts. That narrative is what the organization needs to orbit around.

Decentralizing yourself as a leader and placing that clear narrative in the center allows you to empower more leaders and provides a beacon that everyone can see and then run towards it.