Creating a Vision

Criswell, Cartwright

• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781604910759
• eBook ISBN: 9781604916751
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

To be an effective leader - at all levels - you need to pay attention to vision. Creating a Vision provides the 5 compelling vision elements and the 5 vision articulation factors that will reveal a powerful image of how good your organization is and how skilled you are as a leader.

Five Building Blocks

Earlier in this guidebook we note that the content of your vision establishes an image of your organization: Is it strong? Headed in a good direction? A good place to work? Involved in something that is important?

A close look at our research reveals that a compelling vision includes five content elements:

• the big idea

• the values

• the story

• the growth factor

• the change factor

These five elements are not just important for the overall organizational vision, which is typically set by the senior leadership team. They are just as relevant for team leaders, project managers, group directors, and even individual contributors. Here’s why: Success in today’s organizations requires some level of shared direction, alignment, and commitment among people in the organization. The more complex or broad-based the work, the more reliant we are on collaborative processes of leadership.

In fact, at CCL we believe that direction, alignment, and commitment are the tasks of leadership. Direction is agreement on goals; alignment is coordination of work; commitment is dedication to the success of the organization. In many contexts, the starting point—direction—comes from a leader’s vision.

Whatever the size or scope of your work, leadership begins with defining and connecting to a vision.

The Big Idea

A colleague of ours was studying effective teams and was observing surgery at a regional hospital. One day when a heart bypass surgery was completed, a janitor came into the operation suite. Our colleague said hello and asked the man about his job. His reply? “Me and the doc, we help save lives.”

The janitor understood the big idea of the hospital, but more important, he was personally connected to it.

When a vision connects at a deep, fundamental, heart-filled place, people throughout the organization see that their work matters. The big idea provides overall direction to employees and guides their work toward long-term goals. It represents the idealized state of the organization. It speaks to the impact the work and the people have on others in the world. In our research, we refer to this as an “ideological goal.”

You may not be in the business of saving lives on a day-to-day basis, but what is the fundamental, enduring ideal on which your work is built? What is the big-picture purpose for your company, department, or project team? What inspires, motivates, and instills pride? The company’s mission statement may be a good place to look for the ideological goal.

If the language of ideals and heart and inspiration feels too vague, uncomfortable, or touchy-feely for you, you are not alone. This is the element that our clients struggle with the most. Executives and managers tend to be too tactical in creating a vision—“Our vision is to be number one in the education software market”—rather than inspirational—“Our vision is to create the technology that teaches kids to read.”

But take note: an ideological goal is the strongest predictor of a strong vision. A vision statement should be exhilarating. It should be powerful and inspirational enough to give people goose bumps, to raise the hair on the back of their necks. So if you take no other steps in creating a vision, focus on your big idea. (“A Different Perspective” on page 20 will help you with this.)

Don’t describe the status quo.

“We’re regulated by auditing standards and professional standards. We adhere to those, and those will never change. We have to continue to meet the needs of the client. We have to be in the right locations, and we need to be technologically adept.”

Vision statements with low presence of an ideological goal typically describe what the organization is already doing. They focus on short-term goals, specific areas of the business, or current tactics. They do not describe a big idea or idealized future state.

Do express ideals.

“Our vision is fundamentally to protect the American people. As the Navy, we do this on the sea. It involves protecting the sea and air approaches to the United States of America and elsewhere overseas where Americans reside.”

This strong example of an ideological goal comes from an admiral in the U.S. Navy. In this example, the ideological goal is the statement about protecting the American people. This vision does not refer to a specific achievement, but more of an idealized state of what the Navy is meant to do.

The Values

Does your company’s vision statement sa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Vision and Effective Leadership
• Demystifying Vision
• Five Building Blocks
• A Different Perspective
• Improve Your Delivery
• Vision and Resilience
• Suggested Readings
• Background
• Key Point Summary