A Common Caring

A COMMON CARING

You may remember the movie Spartacus, an adaptation of the story of a Roman gladiator/slave who led an army of slaves in an uprising in 71 B.C.1 They defeated the Roman legions twice, but were finally conquered by the general Marcus Crassus after a long siege and battle. In the movie, Crassus tells the thousand survivors in Spartacus’s army, “You have been slaves. You will be slaves again. But you will be spared your rightful punishment of crucifixion by the mercy of the Roman legions. All you need to do is turn over to me the slave Spartacus, because we do not know him by sight.”

After a long pause, Spartacus (played by Kirk Douglas) stands up and says, “I am Spartacus.” Then the man next to him stands up and says, “I am Spartacus.” The next man stands up and also says, “No, I am Spartacus.” Within a minute, everyone in the army is on his feet.

It doesn’t matter whether this story is apocryphal or not; it demonstrates a deep truth. Each man, by standing up, chose death. But the loyalty of Spartacus’s army was not to Spartacus the man. Their loyalty was to a shared vision which Spartacus had inspired—the idea that they could be free men. This vision was so compelling that no man could bear to give it up and return to slavery.

A shared vision is not an idea. It is not even an important idea such as freedom. It is, rather, a force in people’s hearts, a force of impressive power. It may be inspired by an idea, but once it goes further—if it is compelling enough to acquire the support of more than one person—then it is no longer an abstraction. It is palpable. People begin to see it as if it exists. Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.

At its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question, “What do we want to create?” Just as personal visions are pictures or images people carry in their heads and hearts, so too are shared visions pictures that people throughout an organization carry. They create a sense of commonality that permeates the organization and gives coherence to diverse activities.

A vision is truly shared when you and I have a similar picture and are committed to one another having it, not just to each of us, individually, having it. When people truly share a vision they are connected, bound together by a common aspiration. Personal visions derive their power from an individual’s deep caring for the vision. Shared visions derive their power from a common caring. In fact, we have to come to believe that one of the reasons people seek to build shared visions is their desire to be connected in an important undertaking.

Shared vision is vital for the learning organization because it provides the focus and energy for learning. While adaptive learning is possible without vision, generative learning occurs only when people are striving to accomplish something that matters deeply to them. In fact, the whole idea of generative learning—expanding your ability to create—will seem abstract and meaningless until people become excited about a vision they truly want to accomplish.

Today, “vision” is a familiar concept in corporate leadership. But when you look carefully you find that most “visions” are one person’s (or one group’s) vision imposed on an organization. Such visions, at best, command compliance—not commitment. A shared vision is a vision that many people are truly committed to, because it reflects their own personal vision.