Vision Is the First Step to Accelerating Value Creation
If there is one factor that differentiates one company’s performance, as measured by revenue growth, profitability and market share, from another; it is the scope and power of the vision created by the leadership team.
They create a vision that constitutes a game worth playing and then enrolls their organization in the fulfillment of their vision. It is this full commitment to a shared future that defines a team and is the key to accelerating value creation.
Without this full commitment to a shared future, you do not have a team causing team effectiveness to suffer. Another way to look at this is that you are either pushed by your pain or pulled by your vision. It’s your choice.
What Constitutes a Vision? How Do You Define Vision? What Does Vision Mean?
We look at vision as an over-arching concept consisting of two major components – a Guiding Philosophy comprising the Purpose and Core Values/Beliefs and a two-part Tangible Image. The first part is to declare a compelling Mission – a three to five-year goal that everyone can see as critical to the long-term success of the company. James Collins describes it as a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (BHAG) – a motivator that gets employees’ blood pumping and makes them want to come to work every day.
The second part is to create a Vivid Description of the future state of the Company when the goal is achieved at the end of the three to five-year planning horizon.
How Do You Create A Vision?
Creating a compelling vision is not easy. It takes a fully engaged leadership team, collaborating together, to “tease” out a vision that is compelling enough to enroll and mobilize the organization. Some leadership teams prefer to do this as a facilitated process. As a consequence, we have facilitated dozens of strategic visioning sessions as a part of our Value-Directed™ Strategic Planning Process. Other teams prefer to do it themselves. Regardless of how this is accomplished, the effort is definitely worth it. In our experience, the leadership team is energized by the experience, and they are aligned and committed to bringing forth the vision as a team. In short, the experience creates a fully engaged leadership team that will be able to take new, more powerful actions within a deep sense of relationship and trust.
Vision Helps Align the Organization to Accelerate Value Creation
This shared vision provides an overarching context for aligning the organization, especially marketing and sales to execute your business growth strategy. While marketing and sales alignment is a critical success factor, development and operational alignment are also necessary to bring the full force of the organization to bear on revenue and profit generation. A shared vision will guide your actions and decisions and will provide a context of how to proceed in times of change. Without organizational alignment, it will be difficult to achieve the mission (BHAG) within the desired time-frame, if at all.