Walk into almost any leadership meeting and you will hear the same words:
- Vision.
- Strategy.
- Mandate.
- Values.
- Culture.
Everyone nods. Everyone is confident they understand.
Then you listen a little longer and realize something important:
People are using the same words to mean different things …
and different words to mean the same things.
That small problem with language quietly becomes a big problem with performance.
Teams are smart and committed, yet they talk past each other because their mental maps are not the same.
This post introduces a simple fix: agree, explicitly, on what key words mean and commit that one word will not do the job of two, and two words will not mean the same thing.
Shared language is the first step to:
Get Clear. Align. Grow.
Language as a leadership tool
Words matter. Great leaders start by making sure everyone uses the same words in the same way.
When a leadership team shares precise meanings for core terms:
- Decisions are faster because people are not debating definitions.
- Priorities are clearer because everyone knows where each topic “lives.”
- New leaders and staff get up to speed faster because there is one map, not many.
When meanings are fuzzy, the opposite happens:
- “Vision” and “strategy” get blurred.
- “Operations” and “management” are used interchangeably.
- “Values” and “culture” are treated as the same thing.
The result is good people working hard on different versions of the job.
The Executive Alignment Map: one word, one meaning
At IntelliVen, we use the Executive Alignment Map below, where each of seven core words has an unambiguous meaning. The definitions are ours and offered for convenience. You don’t have to adopt them. What matters is that your team agrees on what each term means. Alignment begins with a shared vocabulary.
- Vision: Where we are headed and why, about 10 or more years out.
- Strategy: How we plan to win in the marketplace over the next 5 years or so.
- Mandate: The milestone by when. The 3–5 year target that turns strategy into concrete ambitions.
- Management: How we plan, build, and assign work so that the Mandate and Strategy get done.
- Operations: How we do, sell, and grow every day to serve customers and deliver results.
- Values: The beliefs that shape behavior and guide decisions, especially when tradeoffs are hard.
- Culture: Values in action. How it actually feels to work here and with us.
Every organization has these elements. The key is to make them explicit, consistent, and shared by those who lead.
- Vision is not a slogan.
- Strategy is not an initiative.
- Mandate is not a task list.
- Values are not posters.
- Culture is not a slide in the onboarding deck.
Once the top team adopts this shared map, everyone knows what conversation they are in and where it fits in the bigger picture.
Why this matters so much
Here is what tends to happen before there is a shared language:
- A CEO says, “We need to revisit our strategy,” but what they really mean is the Mandate (the 3–5 year numbers and milestones). The team hears “new product bets” and “market moves” and they start working on something different.
- HR talks about “culture work” but is really redesigning processes and management practices. Operations leaders hear this as “soft stuff” and disengage, even though the changes will affect them directly.
- A board member asks for “more visibility into operations” and the team responds with detailed project plans (management) instead of how the business actually does, sells, and grows.
The words are familiar, so no one notices the disconnect right away. Yet misfires accumulate. Time and energy are lost. Frustration grows.
When a team decides, together, what each word means, three things change:
- Conversations become shorter and more focused.
- Disagreements become about real choices, not vocabulary.
- People at every level gain confidence that they understand “how things work around here.”
One simple practice to try with your team
If you want to experience the power of shared language, try this:
Ask each member of your leadership team, privately, to write down their definition of:
-
-
Vision
-
Strategy
-
Mandate
-
Management
-
Operations
-
Values
- Culture
-
Bring the definitions to your next offsite or leadership meeting.
Compare them side by side, either by hand or by feeding everyone’s entries into IntelliVen Operations Advisor (IVOA), and circle or highlight where they differ.
You will likely find that:
- Some people skip a word completely and fold its meaning into another.
- Some use the same word for very different ideas.
- A few are surprisingly aligned, which gives you a head start.
From there, work as a group to settle on one short, shared definition for each word, using the Executive Alignment Map as a guide.
Document your final list. Use it in meetings, in onboarding, and in your MtL work. Refer back to it when discussions drift. Over time it becomes part of how you manage and lead.
Do not assume your words are their words
Not assuming that others use key words the same way you do is especially important when you work with people from a different organization, whether you have joined a new company, are serving a client, or are partnering with another team.
It is natural to assume that words like “strategy,” “plan,” “mandate,” or “operating model” mean what they meant in your last organization. Often they do not. Teams may use familiar terms in very local and specific ways.
In a new setting, it helps to:
- Ask early how people use a few key words.
- Listen for how those words show up in real conversations, not just in formal definitions.
- Notice where your own definitions are different from theirs.
- Decide whether to adopt their language, or to work together to reset a few key terms.
What matters most is that you do not assume. You surface differences in meaning early and work toward shared definitions instead of talking past each other for months.
Connecting to your MtL work
In the Manage to Lead system, “Get Clear” always comes first. Tools like:
- WHAT–WHO–WHY (W-W-W)
- Mandate
- Change Framework
all work better when the team shares the same language.
Sorting out the terms covered in this post is just a start. Throughout MtL we unpack important words in a similar way. Each module highlights at least one key term that is easy to gloss over but matters a lot in practice. For example, in Module 4 we sort out the difference between a budget, a forecast, and a working view so leaders stop talking past each other when they talk about “the numbers.”
You can think of shared vocabulary as the foundation.
MtL tools are how you build on it to think, decide, and act.
If you are using MtL on Maven or working with IntelliVen advisors, consider making the Executive Alignment Map your first stop. Agree on the words. Agree on the meanings. Then build everything else on top.
Say the same words.
Mean the same things.
That is how you Get Clear. Align. Grow.
Next Step
If you want help putting this into practice with your leadership team, you can schedule a workshop with IntelliVen or enroll in a Manage to Lead (MtL) training program.
To explore what’s right for you, get in touch with us and we’ll follow up to discuss next steps.