Tomorrow arrives all too soon. The time for Renewal is upon you. The message is clear: revivolute now! However, revivolute to what? What will the new organization -- or the new you -- look like? Stand for? Do? What products and services will you/it market? To whom? How? Deciding to revivolute is the first step, but only the first step. It's a long way between deciding to renew and being renewed.

Deciding to step up to the line and become a responsibility-taking Phoenix Leader is a giant second step along the highway to the future. It gets you to the starting gate. But, the race hasn't started yet. Notice, though, that the crowd of runners has thinned considerably. There's lots of wannabes in the stands, people who "want to be" successful, but haven't taken the responsibility to be a Phoenix leader and get down on the field and spend all those early morning training hours. Look closer, though, this race to the future will not be a cake walk. There are a number of strong contenders. Besides, the track may shift and the rules may change without notice. You have your work cut out for you. The Pyramid is the tool to help you win.

The Pyramid: A Practical Template For The Future

Travel out of Cairo on the hot and dusty road to the south and there, arising like majestic mirages in the desert, stand the pyramids, built of millions of individual blocks that fit smoothly together with a mathematical exactitude that amazes our most advanced mathematicians. Those blocks have stood on that ground for thousands of years. During those millennia, great empires rose and fell, great armies marched by, plundering thieves carved passageways into them in search of royal treasures, desert storms raged. The pyramids prevailed through it all.

The Power of the Pyramid: Perfect Alignment and Integration

The pyramid's strength lies in the perfect alignment and integration of all its components. In the pyramid every stone supports all the other stones. Like a protractor in architecture, the Pyramid lays the lines and angles necessary to create future success for yourself and all those with whom you are interconnected. The Pyramid also helps you create focus. It beats drifting along in a vision-less half-pursuit of the Next Big Thing.

The Stones For The Future

The Pyramid helps us think systematically about the future we want to create and integrate all of the essential ingredients of that future together. It all begins with vision, a raison d'être for existence.
Vision is the 30,000-foot beacon, illuminating where you are going, what you want to be, to create in your future. From that visionary direction springs a mission of what you must do to realize the vision.
Mission is the 10,000-foot binoculars that focuses you on what and how you will deliver to whom. Vision is a desired state. Mission is how you'll get there. Then there are values.
Values are the 10,000-foot compass that guides your everyday behavior as you strive to create the vision and mission. They establish standards of right and wrong. They are the common bond that shape all personal interactions.

The Pyramid begins with vision, mission, and values. These enduring convictions define and characterize us. They suggest the ringing words in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self evident...". They serve as beacons, binoculars and compasses on our trip to tomorrow. But, fine words alone will not create a success. Vision is no solution, everything is execution. Translate the inspiring words of the vision, mission and values into concrete actions by laying the more detailed stones that follow.

Synchronized vision, mission, and values establish the context for your goals, strategies, objectives, measures and rewards.
You establish 1,000-foot goals that specify the intermediate milestones and strategies that are the 1,000-foot roads we follow on your climb towards your vision.
Then you establish objectives, measures and rewards (the disciplined management system) that are the 10 foot to 1 inch steps you take to travel down the strategic road map towards the intermediate goals and eventually on to the vision and mission.
Business processes are the 2x4 and 2x12 framing you build to facilitate the execution of the other Pyramid elements.
Finally, information and communications infrastructures are the wiring that ties all the interconnected folks together and enables the Phoenix to soar.

The Phoenix Pyramid: Renewal That Creates Stability

Why a pyramid? An ancient mosaic found in a Middle Eastern temple shows the mythical Phoenix bird perched upon a stone pyramid. The ancient picture of the phoenix perched on the pyramid illustrates the linking of two great archetypes: the endlessly renewing Phoenix and the perfectly engineered and aligned pyramid. As the Phoenix Renews itself, using the tools of Line Of Sight and Learning, it creates a new future by constructing a perfectly aligned and integrated Pyramid that forms the base from which it can soar and leave its Legacy. The Phoenix builds the Pyramid of its future life and then uses it as its home "air port." The Pyramid helps us all constantly renew and create new futures for ourselves and the organizations with which we are associated.

The Phoenix Leader steps up to the line and takes responsibility for leading her/his connected people in the creation of the Pyramid, the solid base for future success. It's not easy. It takes lots of hard work. Are you ready to begin? Take the first steps by completing the following Phoenix Workshop.

Phoenix Workshop

Use the following form to have Jim Belasco and Jerre Stead help you internalize these principles.