Most strategic planning starts with a discussion of "What's your vision?" and that's the first place where people get stuck. Everyone gets frustrated with trying to "wordsmith" the perfect vision statement. I prefer to think of a business strategy having a "built-in" vision. I find that a vision tends to crystallize during the strategy discussion.
Why is vision important?
Strategy needs vision to give it life. Without vision you have no direction, and are stuck doing what you've always done. Without direction, you have no clarity about where you want to go and what you want your business to be.
Vision gives you focus. Without an understanding of your vision, your staff have no clarity about the organization's purpose or what they should be doing to achieve it. That's demotivating. Without a unified sense of purpose, performance suffers. There is a wastage and leakage of energy, rather than a sense of "pulling together".
Ambitious and energetic people like working in an organization that has a clear sense of direction. If the business seems to be drifting, they are likely to look elsewhere for a position where their contribution can have more impact.
I'm sure you've heard all this before.
It's very easy to say "We need a vision". So why is it so hard to have one? To have a vision, you need to be able to imagine something beyond the current reality; something you haven't seen before. It should be aspirational, rather than a statement of the current situation. A vision is not just an incremental step. Your vision might not currently be possible, but could be achievable over a given time-frame. It's important to have a unique pathway in mind.
To have a vision, you have to allow yourself to imagine something that doesn't presently exist. Author Jonathan Swift said "Vision is the art of seeing the invisible".
It's so nebulous, but so important.
Shelley, your point about vision emerging through the strategy discussion is so true. I've sat around boardrooms while people try to force a vision statement out that usually sounds trite. Once people relax and start talking about what really excites them - what the bigger picture is beyond the financial mission - then vision often emerges. Time is required for the thoughts to percolate, and an ongoing commitment to thinking about how we might like the future to be.
ReplyDeleteHi Shelley
ReplyDeleteThis post is so spot on. I was running a strategic planning day for a senior executive team recently and 1 hour into it we stopped the process completely because what they were planning around was not their real vision. We spent the day reshaping the vision into something that really represented the values and culture of their organisation and from that point on the information just flowed like a river