Vision 101
When you are asked in an interview what is your vision for the company/agency/division? The temptation is to read the room and tell them what you think they want to hear. You want to make your answer match their belief. Wrong!!!
My life and leadership mentor Bill Kuntz preached and preached against doing this. He would say “Brian when you articulate your vision there is a chance that it may not be what they are looking for and that is all right. He would go on to say “the last thing you want is to speak a vision that is not yours. Sure, you may get the job but you will spend your career chasing someone else’s vision. Leaving you miserable and the vision unfulfilled. It will only be a matter of time that this misalignment comes crashing down.” His message was simple- as leaders one of the most important things we have to offer an organization is our vision.
What is a vision and why is it important?
A vision is a clearly articulated statement of what you and your company aspire to be in the future. Vision is foundational to effective leadership. It is the big dream that continues to drive a leader even when he or she have successfully hit every performance goal. It is the unobtainable destination for a leader. It is the reason that keeps a leader up each night trying to discover new ways of streamlining processes, tweaking operations and strategic plans and retaining the best talent. Vision separates average leaders from good ones, good ones from outstanding ones and outstanding ones from the truly great or aptly named visionary leaders. Vision is your organizational wind, fuel and force. It keeps you pressing. Not necessarily stressing but pressing to reach that unreachable place where vision is supposed to reside.
A vision in action
Your vision should live in the shadows of every team meeting. It should be at the center of every “what if discussion” taking place in your organization. So many organizations today are meandering fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter chasing trends and headlines. For the simple reason that they are rudderless. Visionless. No one could have predicted COVID-19 and its organizational impact. The pandemic wreaked havoc on all organizations but the organization’s that faced the greatest struggle and challenge where those that didn’t have a shared vision of who they wanted to be in good and in bad times. Vision galvanizes and coalesces employees into working through the day-to-day efforts with tomorrow in mind. A vision for the future drives present day decisions. Vision is the superfood for organizational culture. Leaders who have one, believe in it and are effective in communicating it have the keys to the heart of their organization.
Where do you start to craft your vision
So how does a leader create a vision?
What does it mean to believe it, beyond just lip service?
And what are the most effective ways of communicating it?
There are very few courses that show leaders how to create a vision. Most leaders stumble into their visions by chance and tradition. They develop their vision based on how their boss developed they’re vision and so on and so on. It is like a mentor-protégé heirloom that gets handed down from leadership generation to next generation. There is no tried-and-true method for developing a clear and actionable vision. This is what has worked best for me after some inherited wisdom from my mentor and some trial and error on my own part-The first piece of the puzzle needed to create a vision is an honest assessment of where your organization is today. Your understanding of where your talent currently lies, where your weaknesses are and what are your greatest external challenges is key to charting a path to a desired future. This is your first hurdle to clear- honest assessment of now. This is sometimes the most difficult hurdle because most organizations and leaders are wired to downplay warts and challenges. Once you have a handle on where you are you gather your brightest and most creative folks to brainstorm about what we can be in two, five and ten years if we had no obstacles and unlimited resources. These folks will give you ideas and prompts to consider as you begin the process of discovering your true North Star. Once you take the top off and just dream without fear or reservation. You gain a perspective of the possibilities without being shackled by the probabilities. This is the starting point for imagining a trajectory for your organization that is worthy of everyone’s time and effort. Because you have seen this vision evolve from ideas and thoughts it becomes an extension of your most intimate dreams for your organization. It becomes a passion for you and that is when the magic happens. When you talk your vision to others, they will feel your strong belief in this future. Your authentic connection will be palatable and contagious. Because you not only see the vision you can articulate the path to getting there.
Why leaders need a vision
A leader who lacks vision cannot respond strategically to challenges. Instead, they are reacting in the moment to external and internal changes. In order to be strategic, you have to know who you are and where you want to go. There is no vision achieved without strategy. There is no strategy without vision. These visionless organizations just simply meander back and forth. Wasting resources and operational inertia. Think of vision as a bucket list destination with no particular pathway to get there. Discovering your path is where strategy comes into play. If you know where you are going, changes in the terrain becomes less of a solution-less problem to overcome and simply an obstacle to attack or avoid. There is an element of reverse mapping that attaches itself to having a vision. Once you know where you are going you can begin to backtrack your path on how to get there. You have greater stillness to anticipate problems and solutions before they arise. You can identify people, and resources needed to achieve the vision.
The power of a shared vision
A well-conceived and articulated vision is gravitational. It pulls people in and grounds them. It is aspirational. It should not be attainable. I repeat it should not be attainable. It should be guiding and drawing. Most vision’s get lost in translation because they are a hodgepodge collection of sound bites and trite and cliched phrases that are more syllable than meaning. This is the trap that so many leaders fall into. They try to craft an award-winning advertisement. A catchy catchphrase. A vision for the ages. One that will be appreciated by all and followed by none. A vision that is more popular than purposeful. Visions are not MBA gimmicks nor dime store tricks to be gawked at. They are not easy to create but the effort of slaving over each word and every idea is worth the time and investment. In fact, it is within this process of wrestling with the “who you are” and the “what you can be” and the “how you are going to get there” that you discover yourself and your personal vision. Which in turn gives birth to your organizational vision. Don’t you get it. This is your vision attaching itself to an organization. It is a very intimate sharing of oneself. Therein lies the magic.
At the end of the day it is your vision to create
The vulnerability required to craft your vision is difficult for most leaders. It is tedious and fraught with failure upon failure. The intimacy of this process makes the discourse even more difficult to absorb and learn from. So, to avoid the work it takes to be a “visionary” leader. Some leaders try to crowdsource their vision. They assemble blue-ribbon committees to develop a vision under the guise of delegation. There is no way of nicely slicing it. You can’t outsource your vision. It is yours and yours alone to create, communicate and inspire. It is a field of dreams type of moment. If you build it and believe it, they will come to share in its execution and accomplishment. We live and lead in a time and age where outsourcing is the quickest way to fill an organizational weakness or skill gap. Outsourcing has become the easy answer to difficult problems. It is the go-to for some leaders who have not hired, developed or retained the skills necessary to respond. So, when the situation begins to pinch and demand that a leader lead with vision and innovation these leaders look outward. This is a microwave form of leadership that is rarely suited for the long run. And always fails to engender loyalty and collaboration from their organization. People respond positively to integrity, vision and respect.
Your vision is an extension of you
A vision should be a personal extension of a leader. As such it stands to reason that the more a leader understands themselves the stronger their vision will be.