So you and your leadership team are heading back from your annual leadership retreat.  You’ve thought deep thoughts, built your plan for next year and are now beginning to wonder about your next steps.  How do you get everyone aligned with this great new vision. Panic and anxiety haven’t set in yet, but they’re lingering.

How do you create ownership in a situation like this? How do you get buy-in to be more than just a cliché?

A sense of ownership is created when executives are assigned tasks. Tom Morrison, an experienced turnaround executive, uses a leadership concept he calls “share the vision.” To make this work, Morrison says your leaders need to have judgment, intuition, and experience, and you must give them the tools and direction necessary to be a part of the action.

Everyone has a specific responsibility, something he needs to do, something about which he needs to be accountable to the board and to other executives. Too often, no clear connection is made between a function that an executive performs and the actual results that action creates. It’s necessary to create a “line of sight”-a term Bob Blonchek and I coined in our 1999 book, “Act Like an Owner“-between what leaders do and the value of the enterprise. When executives have responsibilities and clear lines of sight between their actions and the company’s direction, you’re on your way to aligning the results of your leadership offsite with the direction of the company.

Goodbye panic and anxiety … hello offsite euphoria.