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So you helped others imagine the possibilities. Now what? You will need to enlist others in the passion you have expressed so they can take pride in the work and eventually affect their performance positively. One question you might ask all those involved and committed in your initiative is: “What kind of legacy are we leaving behind?” You will need to inspire everyone from the administrative assistant to the Director or Vice-President with developing and delivering on a system that will make you incredibly proud in a year, or whenever you’re your milestone indicates achievement.

If the stakeholder you are talking to in your organization were to be hit by the proverbial garbage truck tomorrow morning, would his/her co-workers say they were proud of what s/he had been able to accomplish and leave behind. In reality, there is so little a legacy many of us can leave in our workplace. If only my co-workers were proud of the results, that would be enough to keep me in their memory.  

Such a proud legacy would also mean that the organization is sustainable, a term we hear bandied about a lot these days. Sustainability is a critical success factor for long-term growth and expansion into new markets. Each employee is responsible to the organization that helped them develop their skill set. After what we have learned and applied because of the job we were allowed to do, can we turn our back on our firm and hope they survive?

Find a way to be enthusiastic and exciting. As a leader you are expected to be inspiring. If you are a boring mass of indecisive and unexciting activities, why should anyone follow you? Appeal to common ideals and animate your vision.

How can you appeal to common ideals? If you are trying to make a change in a status quo environment, you will need to get folks to think in terms of a place they have never been before, or a majestic new way to carry out their work. Change is seldom incremental in the E2.0 area. Can you stimulate their ambitions, dreams, and aspirations? Do you even know what they are? As Kouzes and Posner (2007, p. 133) say in The Leadership Challenge, “Can you imagine a leader enlisting others in a cause by saying: ‘I’d like you to join me in doing the ordinary better?' ” I think not!

You job is not to continue with the ordinary. Clint Eastwood (playing Frank Morris) in Escape from Alcatraz, [directed by Don Siegel], convinced Fred Ward (playing one brother, John Anglin) and Jack Thibeau, (playing the other brother Clarence Anglin), to escape with him. The odds against success were astronomical.

The escape would be dangerous and the water was frigid and filled with treacherous currents. Eastwood enlisted others in his vision of escape, individuals who acquired the same passion he displayed with the goal of getting out of Alcatraz. Staying in prison (more of the ordinary) no longer was an option for these three prisoners. Eastwood appealed to the dreams, visions, and ambitions of two other men who had no other option for the future than to change their attitude and leave.

Eastwood connected with the other convicts by appealing to what was a common ideal of freedom and to the notoriety of being unique, i.e., no one had ever escaped from Alcatraz.  Eastwood then animated the vision for the convicts by moving decisively and boldly. Eastwood created word pictures of what freedom from Alcatraz would look like, and this energized them all.

Let’s bring this scenario back to the workplace. I am not suggesting you use the analogy of a prison to describe your stakeholder’s current situation, but it may not be far from the truth. Can transformation help "imprisioned" folks break out of their institutionalized mediocrity within an E2.0 initiative? That is where you have to create the excitement that suggests there is a big win when the E2.0 initiative has been achieved. You have to find this passion and excitement within yourself, since few others can provide that kind of vision. If you cannot, then your project is doomed to failure.

Next week we will review the next practice’s first principle: Challenge the Process: Search for Opportunities. Your feedback would be humbly appreciated.