Leadership: Vision

 

In business, as in life, good intentions are often lost. Our everyday practices, not our espoused values, define who we are. To align good intentions with effective practice, leaders need to define a vision, articulate values, and infuse both into every aspect of the business.

 

Most leaders love to make strategy, but it is vision and values that spawn strategic action. The absence of a vision will doom any strategy - especially a strategy for change. A true vision shapes your hiring, assessment, and promotion of employees, and your behavior toward customers, partners, and investors. It is a more powerful tool for leading an organization than any market analysis or spreadsheet. But defining your vision (the expression of what your company wants to be) and articulating your values (the principles governing how you operate) are not easy or painless.

 

• The first step in visioning is to assess your organization, your industry, and your sector of the economy. What do you do uncommonly well, and how do you fit into the changing landscape?
• The next step is to take the management team to an offsite to look at depth at these questions.

 

Matching Effort to Results

 

Many people wonder why we invest such time and effort inculcating vision and values. Leaders are always tempted to focus on core business deliverables rather than "the distraction" of vision and values. But leaders have to pay attention to both, as company culture is inseparable from strategy.

 

A disciplined approach to vision and values helps employees understand what's important in the business. It tells us not just what, but also how and why we are expected to deliver.