Believe in the resolute urgency of now

I am in process of preparing one of the workshops I care most about for a company: Mission Vision Values. They have a very good team – only it is a team of “storming” individuals and not one of those teams that work in full unity to achieve one goal. While having performed the training several times in the past, I found myself wondering about the practical utility of it. The practice of leadership is only slowly finding its way in Romania. Simply discussing the issue of adult teaching and adult development in the sense of adherence to values and governance following a vision is a strain – one either gets laughed at or gets ignored altogether.

Yesterday I spoke to a well-respected trainer who told me leadership was all about common sense, about knowing and following oneself first – before trying to get others to follow you. Now, maybe I am idealistic and a bit overgrown in a culture of quantification, but you cannot measure common sense. That makes training a tricky business – not being able to demonstrate a graspable ROI to the client. What you can do is to repeat training at definite intervals as part of an integral package and try to measure a correlation between financial results, sales outcome, company market valuation and the SMART training objectives. That might work in showing just how much a Mission-oriented training approach has worked.

We'll crucify the insincere tonight

We'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight

We'll find a way to offer up the night tonight

The indescribable moments of your life tonight

The impossible is possible tonight

Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight

(Smashing Pumpkins, Tonight)