A company that prides itself on being modern, current, entrepreneurial, competitive and even traditional, cannot conceive of itself without a vision that guides it towards the destination that it has set itself.
That vision, that dream is everything and represents everything. The mission depends on it, the policies, norms, rules, strategies and tactics, objectives and goals orbit the vision with the firm purpose of making it real, concrete and impactful.
Without the vision, the company would not have a “flight plan”, a destination where to arrive, or, at least, where to see itself “landing” safely and wisely. There would be no "where" or "why", there would only be uncertainty, chance, anarchy and disorder. Vision is the end and at the same time it is the beginning. Without it, the company cannot be started and without it it is difficult to end up creating a legacy. But, is the vision only vital to the company?
To think that only companies require a vision is utopian. Everyone and everything requires a point, a destination, a peak to reach. From a dream… or many of them.
It is traditional and even required that employees, when starting their work in the company, know what the vision of the company is, where it is going, what it hopes to be and achieve; It is even intended that they not only know the mission, but also adopt it as their own and commit to making it possible during their stay in the organization, since it is understood that the joint and coordinated effort will be crucial for the achievement of that important dream. and that's fine.
What is not right is that the company, understood in the traditional concept, worries more about making its employees or collaborators know their dream than about knowing those that, individually, each one of them has and also wants to fulfill.
It is true, companies have not been conceived so that people, making use of them, materialize their dreams. Its mercantile and capitalist sense is willing to generate products and services that at the same time, in some cases, will add value to society and profits to its shareholders and owners, there is no doubt about it, it should be so.
However, companies are indeed a vehicle, a device, an instrument that contributes to the achievement of the individual dreams of their employees or collaborators, because otherwise we would not be talking about a company, in the modern sense of the concept, but about a kind of contemporary slavery where the employee, or in that case, the neo-slave, only has to fulfill his task and nothing else.
The dreams of the employees are as important or more important than those of the company itself.
If the concept of cost has already been understood, it is clear that dreams are the fuel that makes it possible for the motives and purposes of individuals to combine and mesh to give concreteness to the collective expectation without less than their own expectation.
If employees do not see possibilities of achieving their dreams within an organization, they will remain there until a substitute appears, in the best of cases, who provides that possibility, making conscious use or not of the "grasshopper theory" and demonstrating that you are faithful to something or someone as long as a substitute does not appear that offers similar conditions with less effort and greater comforts.
Just as we speak of the competencies of individuals, their knowledge and their expertise as part of the intangible value of the company - of "human capital" -, dreams must be seen as an essential element to keep the company alive, since They, of all the dreams that those who make it up, are the soul of the company.
One of the errors that have dragged on since the industrial revolution and up to the present is that the idea of the vision as the "soul" of the company has been "directed" only to its creator or ideologist, "deifying" the figure of the latter as the visionary capable of seeing what no one observed and that made possible the successful and thriving company that it now boasts; when in reality such an action, although important and significant, would not have taken place without a significant number of people who bet on it and observed the possibility of fulfilling their dreams by materializing the dream of another.
To ignore that it is not the ideas, nor the concepts, the norms, nor the supervision and even the communication that is offered to companies that makes them what they are is to deny the obvious. Dreams, their connection, their exchange and the possibility of realizing them are what build true emporiums.
People work in organizations because they find elements that support their basic social and economic needs, yes, very true, but above all they stay in them because they hope that the dreams that they individually possess will come true in that scenario.
When this is the case, the employee-company-satisfaction relationship is prolonged, performance is as expected, the identification-commitment link is leveled and the famous win-win named by Covey is the order of the day. But when the company is not an ideal place for dreams to be sown and harvested, two inevitable scenarios arise. The first is constant staff turnover, preceded by poor performance and a heavy work environment. The second has to do with average performance, a passive and disinterested attitude on the part of the staff that sends a constant message -usually ignored- of resignation, since it usually happens that basic, social and economic needs are imposed on the desire to achieve the dreams that were originally counted on.
When dreams disappear from the collective inventory, the company is transformed into an organism with a vegetative life, in short, it loses its soul. You can count on a vision, your particular dream, but the lack of connection of that dream with those that make it possible is equated to a rupture of the limbic system of the human body with the rest of the organs, thus preventing from offering responses to emotional stimuli. to which it is subjected, regardless that, at first glance, the body has all the parts and organs it needs to operate.
Companies where the dreams of the employees have been frustrated or degraded to a third plane, understanding that the first plane corresponds to the company vision and the second to which the responsible unit where it works has interpreted it, are easy to recognize by what heavy environment, the lack of speed in the processes, the physical and emotional disorder of the areas where it works and the constant problems that arise at all levels and sublevels that comprise it. The absence of planning or the lack of follow-up of the plans, the low quality of its products and services even when the policies and mechanisms that are supposed to guarantee it are in place, as well as the unequivocal lack of identification and emotional ties with the company. It is simple,people work there because they have not been presented with another offer to retire and, as they have organized, they have put their dreams on a different step than the main one.
These companies act in their markets as "organizational zombies" whose basic function is to feed themselves (offer what they do and charge for it) without offering value to society, its people and even itself.
It would be unnecessary to describe the companies where employees successfully perform their jobs and at the same time achieve their dreams, whether personal, professional or family. Its characteristics are obvious, because not only the employee, both the client and the supplier, feel an almost supernatural impulse to be related to it and expose it as an example and reason for admiration.
The dreams of employees are varied, they can be very simple or very elaborate, although as a company you are not obliged to make them come true, nothing is lost by offering mechanisms, facilities, opportunities and means that help employees, collaborators or partners to reach them. It is simple, if the employee feels fulfilled and happy, he will work with comfort and dedication, this will translate into sales of high quality products and services, which in turn will attract customers and keep those they own captive, that translates into in profits, permanence and leadership for the company and everything, all this to serve as a means to achieve dreams that, in the end, have not cost the company anything.
A popular saying reads "dreaming does not cost anything", and it is so, but when we stop dreaming we lose everything, because it is precisely dreams, expectations that promote the most creative and emotional behaviors of human beings. If companies are unable to understand that they must wisely manage the dreams of those who make it possible, taking advantage of the energy potential that they contain and that will serve as true fuel to keep employees attentive, willing and happy; If companies fail to understand this, they will continue to treasure systems, processes, policies, buildings and as much "materially" as possible, but whatever they do they will always orbit the same evils that have plagued organizations for more than a hundred years and that only a few have been successful.They will have everything that their corporate body needs to taste success, but, by ignoring the dreams of their collaborators, they will have condemned themselves to living without a soul.
