Leadership requires articulating and promoting a sense of shared vision within an organization. Chief executives develop a successful image of their companies and then rally efforts to realize that expectation. They see their own company at the top of a list of ranked competitors or they envision rising stock value that reflects their hard-earned triumph. Yet, a shared vision is most effective at inspiring motivation and commitment when it chases an attainment bigger than the institution itself. If an organization seeks to grow and improve, it must do so by fixing its sight beyond the novelty of its own existence.

Peter Senge proposed in The Fifth Discipline, “A goal limited to defeating an opponent is transitory. Reliance on a vision that is solely predicated on defeating an adversary can weaken an organization long term.” Some visions produce motivation and commitment more effectively than others. A particular vision for a company might provide excitement and energy initially, but eventually prove unsustainable. Just as Senge hints that a vision based on defeating competition is ultimately ineffective, so is an organizational vision preoccupied with its own self image.

A Classical Illustration

The Roman poet Ovid, in his work, Metamorphoses, relates the tale of the mythological figure Narcissus. Everyone adored the attractive young man although he disdained anyone’s affection for him. The prophet-seer Tiresias warned that the only way Narcissus would live to a ripe old age was if he did not come to know himself.

As Narcissus went about his habit of hunting deer in the forest one day, a youth that he had scorned lifted up his hands and prayed, “May he himself love, and not gain the thing he loves.” As the story goes, one of the gods heard this prayer and lead Narcissus on a fatiguing deer-chase that brought him to rest by a clear pool of water.

Ovid continues, “Here the youth, worn down by the chase and the heat, lies down attracted by the appearance of the place and the spring. While he seeks to slake his thirst another thirst springs up, and while he drinks he is smitten by the sight of that beautiful form he sees. He looks in speechless wonder at himself and hangs there motionless in the same expression like a statue carved from Parian marble." He says, "I am charmed, and I see; but what I see charms me I cannot find- so great a delusion holds my love.”

He stared at the image of himself so long that he neglected his own health and wasted away until, “He drooped his weary head on the grass and death sealed the eyes that marveled at their master’s beauty. And even when he had been received into the infernal abodes, he kept on gazing on his image in the Stygian pool.”

This story illustrates the idea that self-absorption invites self-destruction. Modern psychological theory identifies an abnormal condition called Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) – appropriately named after this mythological character. This condition that blinds an individuals’ recognition of other obligations and relationships around them may also be applicable as an organizational phenomenon.

A Collective Disease

Consider some of the other elements of Narcissistic Personality Disorder through the lens of an organizational application:

• There is a grandiose sense of self-importance.
• An inflated judgment of one’s own accomplishments.
• The individual assumes that others are totally concerned about his welfare.
• Though overweening ambition and confidence may lead to high achievement, performance may be disrupted due to intolerance of criticism or defeat.¹

The organizational version of this affliction essentially consists of the same symptoms on a collective scale; an unreal, self-defeating preoccupation with the company’s own image. Narcissus became entranced – to the point of immobilization – with the novelty of his own appearance and attractiveness. His vision (that no one else shared, incidentally) was an illusory image of himself. No thought of something or someone outside his own person entered his mind. An organization might as easily fall victim to a vision of its own success, structure, or dominance and thereby scuttle any potential of surviving, let alone improving.

Many businesses, schools, and even nonprofits exhibit symptoms of this organizational narcissism.² Their leaders’ visions plunge them into traps of self-fixation and they waste time entertaining illusions. Their self-centered efforts prove as futile as Narcissus’ attempts to “plunge his arms into the water seeking to clasp the neck he sees there.”

Ultimately, the business will fail to provide a meaningful service or product to the world. The school will fail to improve both the lives of its students and the communities they locate in. Charities and nonprofits will fail to feed, clothe or educate the masses that depend on their services. Each organization will close its doors without fulfilling a mission of any permanence if it fails to transition its vision to something above and beyond its own existence.

A Modern Illustration

The collapse of one corporate mogul exhibits the consequences of maligned visionary leadership. Brian Cruver, a former employee at Enron Corporation, details some events and attitudes that preceded the colossal failure of that organization. He wrote of an experience when he was first hired at the company: “I looked up and saw a banner the size of a mobile home: From The World’s Leading Energy Company – To the World’s Leading Company. […] Enron was now ready to take over everything”.³

His account illustrates that the company focused on itself; the leaders of the company focused on themselves. The vision that the employees and leaders of the company developed proved to be one of mere survival, especially as allegations and suspicions multiplied. Cruver paints a picture of the company’s failure that is similar in concept and sentiment to Narcissus’ progressive emaciation and untimely death.

Another author that wrote of the Enron collapse alludes to the illusive vision that immobilized the company. He writes, “Looking back, the Enron saga can be seen as a fable of what happens when a company starts to believe the spin and hyperbole about its success that have been spread by the media, admiring consultants, Wall Street, and the company itself”.⁴ Most business and organizational failures originate in abandoning the visions of service and contribution that the companies were first established to realize.

Like Enron’s narcissistic descent and death, other organizations may be similarly fated if their shared visions become contracted and self-concerned. During times of economic contraction, a business or school faces the temptation of abandoning their view of service to causes greater than themselves. An organization slides into a downward spiral of self-sabotage as their preoccupation shifts to their own survival. Could Enron have resurfaced from that whirlpool of scandal by somehow redoubling efforts to provide services and products to the outside world? The company withered and wasted away as it collectively licked its own wounds of blame and irresponsibility.

The Cure

Prescribed treatment for individual NPD provides a model to correct the same ailments on an organizational scale. Cognitive therapies concentrate on a fundamental focus shift from a person’s grandiose fantasies about themselves to something more realistic.⁵ Narcissus could have resumed the deer hunt that first brought him to the bewitching, reflective pool. He could have set his sights on the normal obligations and activities of life to avert his premature death; anything to sidestep the fatal, self-absorbed trance.

A visionary leader will aim the collective sight of the group toward an end way beyond the organization’s own “facial” features. Senge succinctly described this aspect of leadership. He wrote, “Many shared visions are [should be] extrinsic.” Transitioning an organization’s shared vision to an image outside itself may prove to be lifesaving.

Essentially, that shift in shared vision must evolve from what the organization’s future might be, to what the world’s future will be because of this organization. Most thought on the importance of visionary leadership still pertains to this interpretation of shared vision. Those principles are especially valid when applied to transcending organizational self-preoccupation with an extrinsic shared vision. An organization’s vision should be focused through a lens, not into a mirror!

Is your organization’s vision of itself? How does this harm its success? What should it focus on? What can you do, personally, to help shift your company’s sights? What consequences loom if you don’t? What rewards may come if you do revitalize your company with a renewed vision of purpose? What are you waiting for?

¹ The term “organizational narcissism” has been suggested previously in leadership and organizational literature. Howard S. Schwartz, in his book, Narcissistic Process and Corporate Decay (New York University Press, 1990), refers to the concept as it relates to individuals within an organization exhibiting this behavior towards others within that organization. Other authors refer to the concept in the same respect. The term, insofar as this article is concerned, is used as it relates to an organization – as a single entity – and its relationship to the outside world.

² American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Text Revision, Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2000 (p.714-717).

³ Cruver, Brian. Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2002.

⁴ Fox, Loren. Enron: The Rise and Fall. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

⁵ Barlow, David H., and V. Mark Durand. Abnormal Psychology: An Integrative Approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2002 (p. 411).

Steven Churchill is a Learning & Communication Strategist committed to helping people and organizations improve through better learning and communication. Contact him at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

© 2009 The Center for Organizational Design