Dream On

I was in junior high at a friend’s house the first time I really listened to the lyrics of Aerosmith’s timeless rock anthem “Dream On.” Released on their self-titled first album, the song was initially a flop. The band pushed their label to rerelease it late in 1975, and the song eventually reached #6 on the Billboard charts, effectively saving their career as a band.

Steven Tyler described the song as being about “the hunger to be somebody” and the struggles a new band faces. The song has resonated with fans of all ages for over 50 years. I think the song’s resonance comes from the internal desire we all have to both have a dream and to see that dream come true. That longing is often in conflict with the reality that time moves on and none of us can slow it down.

I have a very strong sense of the shortness of the time I have left. At 62, I have lived two-thirds of my life, but I feel like I have two-thirds of my ideas left to accomplish. I am literally running out of time. I started asking myself if other people feel the same way. Then I started asking other people (a much better way to find out what people are thinking and feeling). Turns out, they are. And considering that Steven Tyler was only 14 when he wrote the lyrics to “Dream On,” perhaps age doesn’t matter much at all.

People need to have a dream, and they have a deep need to see that dream come true.

Most organizations have a vision—the “corporate” version of a dream. Many leaders are very adept at communicating that vision and making it visible and “real” to their team members. However, to get real engagement from a diverse group of people, a leader has to connect each person’s personal dream to the organizational one.

Helping someone connect to an organizational vision starts with helping them see their own. Most people have never been asked to name their dream out loud, much less examine it closely enough to know if they’re chasing it. A leader who wants genuine engagement has to create space for that work: sit with someone long enough to hear what they actually want their life to add up to, not the answer they think a boss wants to hear. I must be prepared for someone’s dream to be about getting somewhere and becoming something that has nothing to do with my organization—and be genuinely excited about that.

The organizational vision carries its own test. A vision that only benefits shareholders or owners will never earn the kind of commitment that connecting personal dreams requires. (Of course, in an ESOP, the team members ARE the owners!) Still, the vision has to name a real benefit for every group with a stake in it: the people doing the work, the customers being served, the communities the organization touches, and the owners too. When employees can see themselves inside the win—and not just their function inside someone else’s win—the vision becomes something they can attach a personal dream to.

None of this works if it’s just a performance. A leader can learn the mechanics of connecting personal and organizational dreams and still fail completely because people can tell the difference between a leader executing a technique and a leader who is actually invested in their success. As a leader, I have to care about each person’s dream coming true as much as, or more than, I care about the organization’s dream coming true. That’s a high bar, and an uncomfortable one, because it means my success is measured partly by outcomes I don’t control and may never see.

Steven Tyler was still singing about that hunger more than sixty years later, filling arenas with people three or four generations removed from his own. The song didn’t resonate because he solved the problem. It resonated because he named the hunger honestly, in front of everyone, and let the tension sit unresolved. That might be the most useful thing a leader can offer, too: the honesty to acknowledge that the hunger is real and the time is short, coupled with a genuine commitment to spend what’s left helping someone else chase their dream—the Bison Way.