Leadership: ‘Vision’
“Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way“
Abraham Lincoln (June 20, 1848)
Abraham Lincoln’s advice is worth considering. Indeed, once you have determined what needs to be done and what the future should be, the next thing to do is to work out how to get there.
Nothing is more frustrating than a leader who is on fire with where we want to be but has no plan to get there. We are discussing finding the organization’s future state and getting to where we want to be. This is meant as ‘the vision’ for the organization, and it is different from the organization’s mission. As mentioned in the previous article, ‘Leadership: ‘On Mission’: “mission is the organization’s ‘raison d’être,’ the very reason and purpose for the organization’s existence.” On the other hand, the vision for the organization is where we want to be in the future as we continue on the journey to fulfill our mission and purpose.
In their excellent book “On Mission,” John Buford and Sean Georges offer this crystal clear meaning of ‘vision,’ especially if you substitute the word ‘team’ with ‘organization.’
“Vision is not a complex concept. As with the team’s mission, you should keep it simple. Leaders essentially take their teammates on a journey to a future state. To get to that place, every leader and every member of the team must be able to vividly see what that journey will require and envision how that future state will look and feel.”
Buford, John., Georges, Sean. (2022). On Mission (eBook). Austin: Texas. Greenleaf Book Group Press. (Ch 14. p206 of 352).
If vision is the future state of the organization and a primary task of leadership is to take everyone on the journey, then there needs to be a blueprint as a starting point. Almost every organization of note has a ‘vision statement.’ These should be concise and memorable. You want people to be able to recall the vision with ease. You also want that for your mission statement. If a person is applying for a job, the interview panel should check the candidate’s understanding of the organization’s mission and vision.
For that to happen, both must be published statements and included in the job advertisement. This, of course, is where the first error of judgment comes with leadership and vision. It isn’t good enough to say, “We have a vision statement; people just need to follow it!” As with ensuring everyone is ‘on a mission,’ similar processes and protocols must be in place to ensure everyone is ‘with the vision.’ When you hire that new staff member, provide in their induction and onboarding that mission and vision are referenced at every opportunity. As they guide the recruit through their new job, their mentor should connect every aspect of the latest job to the organization’s mission and vision. When people get sick of hearing it, they’re finally starting to listen to it and maybe starting to comprehend it. It helps dramatically if they see the senior leaders singing from the same page of the organization’s hymn book. Enthusiasm can be contagious.
The other mistake often made by leaders is they treat both the mission and the vision as a single discrete entity. It isn’t. It should be integrated into the ebb and flow of organizational life and the people’s work. Suppose, for one moment, you decide to visit a sick relative in Boston and live in New York City. Your mission is to go to Boston to visit a sick relative. Your vision, your future state, is to arrive in time to spend significant time, on a particular date, with your relative. This will require you to drive from New York City to Boston.
If you are driving a car from New York City to Boston, you may use a GPS device, where you ask it for directions, and it guides you there. In much earlier times, there would have been a physical road map to help get you there. If arriving at the destination by a particular date is the vision, the future state, where you want to be, the map alone won’t get you there. You need a vehicle. You need to ensure that the vehicle is fit for the trip and has sufficient fuel and resources to sustain you and the vehicle for the journey. Ideally, you want it to be cost-effective. If you have friends joining you on this road trip, what is their role in executing your vision to get from New York City to Boston by a specific date? Is it their job to sing songs with a guitar while you do the driving? Can they share the driving with you, and would you let them? If the vision (future state) is to drive from New York City to Boston to arrive by a specific date, then a series of discrete yet integrated tasks need to be undertaken: 1). Plan the route. 2). Determine your budget for the trip, both in dollars, time, and labor. 3) Select the best vehicle for getting there. 4). What breaks and food stops will you need? 5) Where will you stay? 6) What might you do when you get there? 7) Who should be asked to join you on the trip? 8) Is there a return journey? All of these are discrete yet integrated tasks. They are things to be done to bring your vision to fruition. This example is a metaphor for ‘the vision’ in organizational life.
To translate the metaphor into reality, consider this.
Plan the route.
Do you know what the vision is, what is the best path forward, people, teams, and resources, to have the best chance of reaching the future state that is the vision?
Determine your budget for the trip, both in dollars, time, and labor.
Everything has a cost. How much you budget in terms of dollars, time, and labor reflects how much of a priority the vision is. Ultimately, your budget items should connect to the mission and vision of the organization.
Select the best vehicle for getting there.
Is the current state of your organization fit for purpose? If not, what needs to change to make it fit for the journey ahead?
What breaks and food stops will you need?
What training and professional learning and development will be critical to success? Perhaps a team retreat is needed. Importantly how will you know that it was impactful and fit for purpose?
Where will you stay?
Where will your organization be physically and in the virtual/online world? Do you need to relocate or leverage technology to be more effective?
What might you do when you get there?
How will you know once you reach your future state and achieve the vision? Importantly, how will you celebrate the achievements of the staff and teams along the way, and how will your organization celebrate when you reach that future state? Rituals are essential in forming a shared bond around the organization’s mission and vision.
Who should be asked to join you on the trip?
What does your staffing mix need to look like to achieve the vision?
Is there a return journey?
To put it another way, once the vision has been achieved, take the time to review it and figure out the future state of the following vision.
Nothing is more frustrating than a leader who is on fire with where we want to be but has no plan to get there.
In his groundbreaking book, ‘The Excellence Dividend,’ Tom Peters highlights the importance of undertaking the discrete yet integrated tasks needed to bring a vision to life instead of fixating on the vision itself.
“Leadership may involve vision, authenticity, and so on. But in the main—and the source of managers’/leaders’ highest impact—is “stuff”—discrete tasks such as hiring and evaluating. And, frankly, very few managers/leaders merit the word pro when it comes to these discrete tasks that are the real meat and potatoes of their job.”
Peters, Tom. (2018) The Excellence Dividend: Principles for Prospering in Turbulent Times from a Lifetime in Pursuit of Excellence (eBook). London, England: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. (Ch. 5 p181 of 508).
This is precisely where the quote from Abraham Lincoln fits in.
If your friends are joining you, how does your mission and vision connect with theirs? If people are going to engage with the organization’s mission and vision, connecting it to their mission and vision in life is one obvious way of doing so. Often, individuals will name this personal sense of mission and vision as their passion, explaining why they work in education, healthcare engineering, etc. Harnessing this passion will go a long way to engaging these staff members with the mission and vision of the organization. It allows them to be aspirational for the organization and themselves and inspirational for others. Individuals who can integrate the mission and vision of the organization with their mission and vision are most likely on a path of personal and professional transformation. Generally, this requires inner work to achieve work-life integration, not just balance. In turn, we arrive at a fearless approach to life, including our work and pursuing a particular vision. Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and Thrive Global, highlighted the importance of inner work to the personal and professional life.
“Reintegrating the spiritual and the everyday is the key to fearlessness. But ending this division is not easy when we’ve stopped even acknowledging that we live caught between these two worlds. When we’re consumed with climbing the career ladder or just making a living, the spiritual seems unreal and far away. So we keep it conveniently penciled in one day a week, we seek it out only in moments of crisis, or we deny it altogether while trying to convince ourselves that we can overcome all fears and obstacles on our own.”
Huffington, Arianna (2017). On Becoming Spiritually Fearless. (Thrive Global).
One clear advantage of faithfully developing your inner life is the confidence it brings to your life, including your professional life. This confidence often lends itself to being more comfortable around the team that you lead. People who are active in the work of their inner life are more self-reflective and self-aware. The wisdom that can come from this and the insights gained may well lead to a greater willingness to collaborate on shaping the vision statement so that everyone has ‘buy-in’ to it. The statement needs to be memorable and inspire an action to undertake the discrete integrated tasks that will lead to the realization of the vision. Decisions connected to mission and vision don’t just happen. They would generally lend themselves to careful thought and even planning. In Australia, the Queensland Government has a useful page to guide businesses around mission, vision, and values. These 8 ‘tips’ help the organization create a memorable and impactful vision statement.
Tips for business vision statement writing:
These tips can help you develop a high-impact business vision statement.
- Align it with the broader goals, values and mission of your business.
- Avoid too many inclusions—don’t obscure the message or clutter the statement with too much detail.
- Keep the statement short—it should say a lot in few words.
- Ensure that it covers the key purpose of your business.
- Make it passionate, powerful and memorable.
- Ensure that the vision is realistic in terms of resources, capabilities and growth potential. Be aspirational but not unrealistic.
- Use language that is clear, concise and free of jargon.
- Aim to make it inspiring and motivating. It should capture the audience’s attention and prompt them to take action.
The State of Queensland (Australia). (2024). Create a Business Vision. Brisbane, Queensland: Business Queensland.
As mentioned earlier, knowing the mission (the organization’s purpose) and the vision (the organization’s future state) is essential. Fixating says the vision can be problematic. Ensuring that the integrated or discrete tasks mentioned earlier by Tom Peters are worked on is undoubtedly needed, but it must be done with heart and soul. In other words, if the daily ‘To Do List’ becomes the ‘Daily Grind List,’ there is a problem. When the vision becomes a series of chores, people will become disengaged, disenchanted, and ultimately disapproving of what their work has become. The more they feel like a mere functionary, a cog in a monolith, the less productive they will be and the less likely you are to keep your staff. They will go elsewhere in search of a place to be appreciated. They will find a place where their talents can be used more fully and where they will likely grow personally and professionally. Personal and professional alignment with the organization’s mission, vision, and values is essential to engagement. While it might sound like common sense, high levels of employee engagement will lead to the vision and, ultimately, the mission being achieved and fulfilled. Mark C. Crowley, in an article for Fast Company, made this astute observation.
“My conclusion is that too many workplace managers are so focused on doing, on achieving–on moving the ball down the field–that they rarely take the time to consider how their employees are feeling. And this lack of awareness is repeatedly proving to be their downfall. If they’re not feeling the love, people are especially willing to seek it in a job somewhere else.”
Crowley, Mark C. (2022). You Need A Leadership Makeover If You’re Just Focused On Getting Things Done. New York City, New York: Fast Company.
Leadership is about helping people join the dots to see a better version of today (and tomorrow) than they can currently conceive. Organizations should be life-giving places. In terms of health, good vision often leads to vitality in life. This is true of organizations. Things happen when staff work collectively to fulfill the mission and achieve the intended vision. The vision of the organization creates the possibility of being healthy and life-giving. It is essential for the leadership group not just to alert the staff to the organization’s vision; it must be communicated concisely and passionately. If the staff perceive that the leadership group is not 100% behind the newly annunciated vision, if they don’t believe in it, why should the staff? Staff development is a ‘must do’ activity if the success of the organization’s mission and vision is to have any chance of being achieved. It is critical to the success of the vision and the mission for the leadership to create the supportive, life-giving environment people need to thrive and flourish. It’s about leading with heart and soul.
“It takes people to make the dream a reality.” Walt Disney
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