Two (+1) Anchor Points for Decision Making

Anchor #1: Organizations have a reason for their existence as captured in their vision, mission and goals.

Anchor #2: Organizations consist of people who in turn have their personal vision, mission and goals.

Decisions are typically made in organizations using these two anchor points. Those good at influencing and 'politics' understand both of them.

Appealing to individuals to 'set aside their personal gain and focus on the greater good' is effective only when the individuals share the same value system. Therefore, this leads to the proposition of a third anchor: the value systems subscribed to by the organization and the individuals. Organizations have espoused values. In addition, individuals have values that may not be a total subset of the organization values. The individual values are visible in their behavior and may or may not be consistent with their espoused values.

Decisions that do not exploit all 3 anchor points will take longer to define, take longer to communicate, be disruptive to implement and probably not be effective.

Cultural change is hard because it requires each of the anchor points to move to a new coordinate.