The VSPT leadership framework from West Point is simple and it is from the 1990s. Understanding how to use this framework will revolutionize your approach to leadership.
With VSPT you can quickly identify the primary disconnect(s) that exists in any organization:
You use VSPT to quickly identify, mitigate, and eliminate the disconnects that exist between your team members, teams, and your entire organization.
The VSPT Framework
The fourth part of this series is Tile 4, the VSPT leadership framework:
There is a teach-back on VSPT with Jeff Kissinger, FCT (click link to see the teach-back on this topic). We will go through each item in the table above with a brief explanation and how to use it, every day.
In the original version from West Point, VSPT included:
- Vision, Strategy, Projects, and Tactics
For the past two decades, we have used:
- Vision, Strategy, People, and Tasks
This is because we are methodology agnositic regarding how you wish to get things done at the individual and team levels, so using the word “projects” seemed to overly restrict the development of Products, Services, and/or Results.
Vision
It is stunning that so few people in leadership seem to understand the power of Vision, let alone how to use it to help your teams achieve higher levels of performance. Without a clearly defined Vision, it is next to impossible to have the tough conversations that need to happen to move the organization forward.
If you don’t understand why Vision is requisite to success, then I would suggest reading the previous posts on this topic. Simon Sinek’s suggestion to rename the CEO to CVO (Chief Vision Officer) is a splendid example of why Vision comes first (then you can start with Why after that).
Strategy(s)
It’s more-or-less pointless to talk about strategy if you haven’t done the tough homework of getting Vision right to begin with, right from the start. Red ocean, blue ocean, purple ocean ideas are meaningless in the absence of clarity. Without a clear Vision, whether a strategy is good or bad quickly becomes irrelevant.
Along with the Four Whys, there are also several posts on this topic as well.
Many organizations make the mistake of diving in at the Strategic level, ignoring Vision completely. They do so at their own peril.
As a wise king once penned, “where there is no vision, the people perish.”
People
Without having the right people on the teams, implementing your Vision and Strategy(s) becomes a challenge. Again, we have a ton of material on individuals and their impact on your organization.
Everything that we do in the Flow Leadership Framework is focused on People (having the right people, doing the right things, at the right time, potentially in the right way(s), and delivering the right results that adds tremendous value to the organization). Having a wrong person in the wrong role risks increasing the anxiety levels of the other team members exponentially (since trying to deliver anything could devolve into an exercise in futility).
And let’s not even get started on toxic individuals and their deeply negative impact on the organization. You simply cannot hug a porcupine.
Tasks
It all boils down to getting things done. It really doesn’t matter what you deliver if you are not delivering those things that are aligned with and that will deliver your overall vision, mission, purpose, core values, strategies, and goals/objectives.
A Vision without a plan is just a hallucination (or nightmare); and a plan without a Vision is just a collection of random tasks.
Adaptation of an old Japanese proverb by Ted Kallman and Andrew Kallman
Getting tasks done is good.
It’s even better if those tasks add tangible and measurable value to your organization! The VSPT leadership framework gives you a powerful way to understand, mitigate and/or eliminate the disconnect that is present with your teams, leadership, and executives.
As with all the other items above, we have covered delivering tasks in several other articles, posts, and videos. If there is one thing that the Flow Leadership Framework excels at, that is delivering and getting things done!
The 18 Tiles
The fourth tile, the VSPT leadership framework, as shared above is the fourth of eighteen areas on which we focus in the Flow Leadership Framework and Mindset. In subsequent posts I will be walking you through how to implement the remaining tiles to deliver outstanding and remarkable results, every day.
Four down, fourteen to go!
Focus Led Organizations Win!
Flow is methodology agnostic and will deliver consistent, remarkable results regardless of what’s being used at the individual, team, and product levels in an organization. That’s been proven over-and-over again during the past 26+ years on assignments in Europe, North America, and Asia.
So, why is it that you aren’t using Flow yet?
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For those that are not familiar with the Flow Leadership Framework & Mindset, it is what’s next for businesses and organizations that are ready to succeed regardless of the methods, frameworks, mindsets, or management tools that they use throughout their enterprise. Flow is methodology agnostic.
Are you ‘in the zone’ of optimal performance right now as a person, team or enterprise? Did you get there by accident or by focused intentional acts?
“Flow” gives you the way of working and mindset needed to create and maintain an optimal state of high performance as an individual, team or organization.
The Flow Leadership Framework turbocharges everything you do, including “business agile” leadership and Scaled Agile.
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PS Here are the associated links to this blog post for:
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