‘Vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.’

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor, Harvard Business School

This chapter covers:

• the differences between ideas, mission, strategy and vision
• the key elements to keep in mind when building your vision
• why and how innovation fits into the vision building process
• the key criteria for unleashing innovation – both in you and in your team members.

Lee Kwan Yu had a fierce sense of purpose. He knew what he wanted to achieve for his country and, over 30 years, he systematically worked towards it. He crafted a compelling vision of putting Singapore on the map of the global economy. He possessed a certain clarity and purposefulness and succeeded in his mission because of his rigorous execution of that vision.

Successful vision building cannot be left to chance. Thinking things through and defining the intention is the safest way to reach the vision. The vision itself is vital – to inspire, trigger action and, ultimately, ensure there is a reaping of the rewards.

Mission, vision, ideas and strategy: making sense of the melting pot

Vision is the mountain to be climbed to get closer to the mission of your company. It is a new definition of the future. It should be inspiring, compelling and unique. It should channel everyone’s energies in one direction. It is built with ideas and turned into action by means of strategy.

In the corporate mind, the mission statement, strategy, vision and ideas can appear, at best, intertwined and at worst, blurred and generally confusing. It is critical, however, that the definitions of each of these elements and the logical flow from one to the other are fully understood.

Defining ‘mission’

‘Mission’ may be defined as the ultimate purpose of an organisation. It represents what the organisation is and what it does. It should be ingrained and seen as everlasting.

All mission statements have one thing in common: they are never reachable and will never be completed. A mission statement should represent the star on the horizon that the organisation is constantly aiming at.

Defining ‘vision’

‘Vision’ is more concrete than ‘mission’ – it is what the organisation is aiming to become in the near future. It includes an element of the dream and permits a certain freedom of thinking. It requires the ability to see above and beyond the now and the real.

Vision acts like guidance. The purpose of it should be to answer the following question:

• What is the future I want to stimulate progress towards?

A vision has a timeframe and should evolve to stay in tune with what might be possible in the future. A vision should be convergent, crystallising energies towards one single point of focus that makes sense and is compelling.

The connections between mission, vision and ideas

A vision should be rooted in the mission of the company and its core values. As we have seen, a mission is everlasting, but a vision is evolving and should change over time. If a mission is indeed the star to be reached, a vision is the mountain to be climbed to get closer to it. Once climbed, then it is necessary to move to the next-highest mountain.

In the past decade, there has been much emphasis in leadership on the generation of ideas, with increasing pressure being put on executives to develop their creativity. Leaders of the future, however, will have to work not simply with problems but also with dilemmas – unsolvable problems – in a more and more complex and fast-moving environment. Ideas will be readily available, but turning them into a vision will be what counts.

Does a vision come from ideas? Yes, but with a caveat. Ideas are the fertile soil for vision building, but, at a certain point, vision building needs to cut through the plethora of ideas, rationalise and ultimately focus on one idea, translating it into strategy and actions. Vision is the relentless exploration of one direction, by researching and having a deep understanding of it.

‘Thinking outside the box’ is a great way of describing the generation of ideas. If we apply it to vision, we might talk about ‘building a new box’. Vision aims to change existing paradigms.

Finally, ideas, when applied to problem solving, can appear culturally neutral. However, visions are not. They are deeply rooted in a clear aspiration for a new world and reflect the personal culture of the thinker.

Defining strategy

Strategy is the next natural step. It is the necessary move forwards from ideas and goals to ultimately create impact.

Strategy sits close to vision, but further away from the mission statement. A strategy finds the best paths to enable the vision to be achieved, taking into consideration any likely changes in the environment. A strategy should be fluid and partly reactive, partly proactive. It should have one purpose only – ensuring the adequate delivery of the vision.

Being clear on all the key concepts and existing interdependencies allows for the vision to be developed and communicated effectively. Figure 9.1 represents the flows between the different concepts.

How to create your vision

Vision building is an exciting and daunting exercise. It involves taking into account several elements, such as your own vision-forming abilities, the organisation’s core ideology (values and purpose) and leader’s personality. It also entails establishing either a series of bold goals or a picture of a better, brighter future, articulating what is in there for everyone. The role of innovation in the vision building process needs to be defined and the line drawn clearly between incremental progress and breakthrough. Vision building is not a solitary exercise – involving your team in co-creation is key.

Vision is an inspiring tool, depicting an exciting future for the organisation. In the same way that you have established a personal brand for yourself, transitioning from your current state to your desired future state, vision is the equivalent of applying personal branding to the company, business unit or department.

Finding the visionary leader in you

Before delving into how to create a vision, it is important to first assess your visioning capability by reflecting on the following questions:

• Do you believe that your work involves managing an endless series of crises?
• Do you often wonder ‘Why am I doing this?’ or ‘Does it really matter?’
• Do you feel that you have a sense of a long-term purpose?
• Do you remember the last time you talked about your job with excitement?

Generally, if you are more inclined to reply positively to the first two questions and negatively to the last two, your visioning abilities are not being activated or challenged or, more fundamentally, you are not the visionary type. If, alternatively, you reply negatively to the first two questions and positively to the last two, you have sustained visioning abilities or have found a vision that is both compelling and exciting.

It is important to invest time in working on your vision, both for your own sake and because of the impact the lack of it will have on your organisation. If you do not believe in your vision or have lost sight of it, the chances are that this will be felt by your team. Another key thing to learn will be how to leverage your team’s diversity to co-create your vision.

To define your leadership brand, decide how you want to be perceived by the organisation. This builds on your observations of the behaviour of the role models you identify in the organisation (see Chapter 3) and how your core values match the organisation’s (see Chapter 6).

Vision building needs to emanate from the two dimensions mentioned above. Asking yourself the following question may be useful:

• In line with my leadership brand and my core values, what do I want to create that will have a long-lasting impact on the organisation?

This should be the one of the building blocks of your vision building process.

Establishing the building blocks

If you take a step back, creating a vision involves answering the following macro question:

• What’s next, better or new for the organisation?

This needs to be asked while applying different filters or looking at things from various angles. The goal is to come up with the most compelling answer by capturing the following:

• purpose and values
• personality
• impact
• cohesion.

Purpose and values

This requires that you look inside your organisation. Your vision will be most compelling if it resonates with the environment you are operating within. It needs to address the core values (what the company stands for) and the core purpose (what the company’s reason for being is) to create a feeling of consistency and inspire action.

The first step in vision building is to conclude what the essence of the company is. To be powerful, it needs to be decided on by individuals within the company who have the relevant value set. It also needs to be deeper than simply the pursuit of outstanding financial results.

Personality

This requires you to look inside yourself.

The ultimate purpose of a vision is to trigger action. This is easier if you root it in something that you deeply care about which will also bring benefits to the organisation.

Impact

This requires you to look beyond the current state of the organisation.

Being forward-looking, being able to envision exciting possibilities and enlisting others to join in a shared view of the future is the attribute that most distinguishes leaders from non-leaders, according to their followers.

Some schools of thought state that ‘forward-looking’ means having a vision depicting a sustainable and compelling future, built by means of big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs).¹ BHAGs typically have a lifespan of 10 to 30 years and are grounded in an understanding of current reality, enabling the projection of a desirable future.

BHAGs can be driven by:

• quantitative or qualitative targets, such as Wal-Mart’s becoming a $125 billion company by the year 2000
• role models, such as Chinese company Taobau’s of becoming the eBay of the East – these are usually effective for up-and-coming organisations
• common enemies, such as Honda’s statement in the 1970s, ‘We will destroy Yamaha’ or, more recently, the Apple/Google battle over the ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra
• an internal transformation, such as General Electric’s drive in the 1980s to ‘Become number one or number two in every market we serve and revolutionise this company to have the strengths of a big company combined with the leanness and agility of a small company.’

Cohesion

This requires you to look inside the people in your organisation.

A leader or a leadership team needs to craft goals that are compelling for the organisation and which appeal to the employees. Creating enduring, visionary companies is 1 per cent vision crafting and 99 per cent alignment. The alignment part is linked with the employees – they need to be part of the equation, to have a voice. The stronger the alignment, the higher the chance of empowerment and execution.

Building a shared vision by understanding their human condition and articulating how the vision will, to some extent, help them fulfil their hopes and dreams is critical. In simple terms, your vision has to ‘do something for them’, so listen to what they find exciting and important.

In his tribute to Steve Jobs at the Silicon Valley Bank’s CEO Summit in October 2011, Guy Kawasaki crystallised this:

‘We rose to the occasion because we were presented with the biggest challenge ever. If you ask employees of Apple, “Why do they put up with the challenges of working at Apple?” “Because Apple enables you to do the best work of your career”, is what they would answer.

You will not find anything related to pushing yourself towards excellence in Apple’s vision statement. However, people go above and beyond the call of duty at Apple because they inherently know it makes them better professionals. There is a strong pull for them to align themselves with that idea and make it true of them.

The role of innovation in vision building

It is interesting to compare and contrast vision and innovation. In the past 20 years, the imperative to be innovative has been paramount for executives. It is important to assess why innovation can help vision building, understand the difference between incremental and disruptive innovation and be acquainted with the three elements that will turn you and your teams into better innovators.

Why innovation can help vision building

These two fundamental questions need to be asked:

• Do you have to be truly innovative to build a vision?
• Is a vision good enough if it is not innovative?

The answer to the first question is ‘No’. If you look around you, how many companies are actually really innovative in their vision building? What matters is the ability to differentiate and create some additional value by having a compelling vision. Can it be qualified as innovation, though?

The answer to the second question above is probably ‘Yes’. There is no right or wrong vision. There is only a vision that resonates with the core ideologies of the company and predicts a future that you as a leader want and will be compelling and motivating for the whole staff.

The point here is that innovation – both the incremental and breakthrough types – is not a necessary requirement for vision building. However, its role is that of an enabler for leaders to make a vision entirely theirs. It is their way of expressing their own creativity in and through the vision – their mark, their brand.

Incremental or breakthrough innovation?

The difference between the two is an important one to keep in mind. As a leader, you may have different views on innovation and different approaches when it comes to how to best use it.

You may take what could be defined as an evolutionary approach in your vision for your organisation. This would imply a reliance on integrating innovative ways with BHAGs to create your vision. You would be looking for improvements big or small from your current internal base. These could be applied to products, as much as processes or organisational or business models. For example, Gillette made an incremental product innovation when it moved from one-blade to two-blade razors, and up to five now. Also, the Apple iPod initially came out only in white and was only able to store and play MP3s. Now we know it as a colourful device that also stores videos and pictures. The concept of shared service centres that has led leaders to rethink organisational structure in terms of functional processes and value-adding activities is also an example of incremental innovation at an organisational level.

The aim behind all these examples is to attain a vision of excellence, creativity or productivity.

One way to revolutionise a company is to practise what might be called ‘entrepreneurial vision building’. Such as vision is built on pure innovation and some kind of breakthrough. This can be brought about by addressing gaps or current problems in the market or, alternatively, projecting a reality of your own creation and desire – not by attempting to succeed in an existing market, but by creating a new one.

Innovation is, in the end, very ‘personal’ to the leader – and the organisation. Incremental innovation may be appropriate and relevant in one company while breakthrough innovation will suit another.

How to become more innovative or foster innovation

As Disney’s CEO Robert Iger stated, ‘Innovation is the balance to tradition to keep things moving forward.’?² Developing a sense of innovation, becoming innovative or building on your natural abilities is what matters.

You need to be aware of what skills are required to make innovation possible and you and your team more innovative. Consider the following three activities:

• Questioning This requires you to constantly filter and challenge business models, issues and, vision – in other words, challenge the status quo. Think in terms of ‘Why?’, ‘Why not?’ and ‘What if?’ Enrich a vision building exercise by systematically introducing constraints that could jeopardise the future you want to bring to life. This will help you to find innovative solutions or even lead to breakthroughs. The name of the game is to challenge, challenge and challenge.
• Observing Keep your sensors open. Observe the environment as a whole, both inside and outside your business. Look for pain points and frustrating situations. One way to do this is to spend time with your customers and suppliers to understand how your company fits into their own value chains. Observe and make notes. How do they differ from how you had perceived them? What was interesting, better or worse than what you had imagined? What does this mean for your business and how can it be enhanced or changed?
• Networking This allows you to develop a wide frame of reference. Connecting with others will feed you intellectually and allow you to compare and contrast viewpoints. (More on networking can be found in Chapter 8.)

Ultimately, these three activities lead to developing one skill, which is the ultimate skill of the innovative thinker – the ability to associate. It is this skill that Guttenberg used when he created the printing press. Guttenberg attended a social gathering at one of the local beermaking families’ houses. He took a tour of the brewery and, when he saw the pressing mechanism, he experienced an epiphany. He applied this idea to book printing.

Similarly, Charles Merrill created the first retail bank by associating banking services with what could be defined as the key characteristics of a supermarket. This was to address the increasing need of a vast new middle-class market, adopting low-cost high-volume merchandising and the concept of chain outlets with a great variety of products.

Mark Zuckerberg associated the concept of a virtual community with the traditional university or school yearbook to create Facebook.

You can integrate either incremental or breakthrough innovation into your vision building. As a self-aware leader you will know whether you naturally lean towards the evolutionary way of incremental change or the revolutionary way of breakthroughs.

Saying what you’ve got to say

A vision can only become a good one when it acts as a trigger for bringing about a new future, above and beyond what it says in the vision statement. It needs to have an impact and, to do that, being able to communicate with passion, conviction and emotion in any medium, orally and in writing, is critical. As the world today is highly connected, using modern means of communication, such as videos and social media, is a sign of a leader of tomorrow.

So, what are the important points to take away from this?

Vision statements can be powerful, but a vision needs to be cascaded down through the organisation. It needs to spread, almost virally, so all understand and get behind it. Engaging people with the vision and drawing others in by means of adequate communication is the last (but not least) element to consider in making a vision a reality.

Effective spoken communication

Oral communication is the most efficient way to broadcast your vision, but language matters. Words, your words, matter in getting the people around you to buy into your vision.

These words can happen in small settings – one-on-one or team meetings – or in front of big audiences. You can choose to simply stand up and talk or go through accompanying slides.

Anyone who is knowledgeable about the art of public speaking will mention the three following attributes as being essential to bringing your vision to life:

• passion – because it is this that will most certainly trigger a reaction and subsequent action
• emotion – people need to establish emotional bonds, so if you create a feeling of belonging and make your listeners believe in your vision or make your vision personal to them, they will deliver for you (remember the example of Apple earlier in this chapter)
• conviction – because you need to believe in what you are saying before getting others to believe in it.

These three attributes help to make the vision vivid and so have an impact on people.

Use images, metaphors and stories to depict the future and why it matters. Do not worry about articulating the ‘how we will get there’ – this will be dealt with by your strategy. If the vision is compelling, the people around you will find the paths to get there.

It can be daunting to express emotions and passion while addressing a large number of staff or even talking to individuals. The following are some pointers and tips to help you overcome this discomfort:

To communicate an emotion

• Reminisce on a particular personal situation that was emotionally charged, good or bad. For instance, you might think about a conversation with your boss when a lot was at stake, having an important discussion with your teenage offspring or preparing for a break-up. This will allow you to reconnect with and fire up your emotions. You can then hold on to this feeling as you speak.
• Think in terms of colours. What is the colour that would best describe the emotion you want to feel? What words, sounds or situation will best describe your emotion?
• Put yourself in the picture by linking the situation to and telling a personal story.

To communicate with passion and conviction

• If the subject is of personal interest to you, then just show that and let the energy light up what you say.
• If you have to fake it, then imagine you are talking about one of your hobbies, a favourite activity or something else you are particularly interested in. Project what you would say about these things and how you would say it on to the topic in question.

Practise and practise again

• Think about what you want to say and how you want to say it. Practise by speaking out loud, standing and occupying the space in front of a mirror, alone or with some members of your feedback group.
• Come at it from different angles, practising to feel the emotion, for example. The best way is to do this is to picture yourself giving this speech to someone dear to your heart – your partner, spouse, children.
• Practise to test that the vocabulary and rhythm of your presentation are right.
• The benefits of practising are twofold. First, you will be able to control the flow of your presentation and the accuracy of it much better than if you don’t. Second, it will allow you to observe and sense what is required in the room, adjusting your rhythm, personal examples or even data as necessary to keep your audience with you.
• Consider enrolling in poetry, debating or acting classes or a toastmasters group. Any of these will help you develop your communication skill set, particularly communicating your vision, public speaking and negotiation.

Winston Churchill was the master of communicating with emotion, passion and conviction. The following is from the address he made in 1938 after Austria fell to the Nazis:

‘We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world, for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilisation.’

He did not simply say, ‘Beat Hitler’, he made it personal to everyone, drawing on people’s national pride and their sense of destiny. He made everyone feel that they were about to make history, regardless of the outcome. More importantly, he made people want to be part of that history.

New times, new media. Churchill’s lessons are timeless when it comes to crafting a message, but leaders must be in tune with their own time when it comes to delivering their messages. In a world of video and instant messaging, any communication strategy that doesn’t include these and other media is incomplete.

Effective written communication

It takes time to personally present the vision to every member of an organisation. Some leaders are not at ease with being recorded using any media, so the next best way to communicate your vision is in writing.

This requires you to be able to mirror the attributes of effective spoken communication mentioned earlier in this chapter – passion, emotion and conviction – without the benefits of an immediate feedback loop that is the audience’s reaction. It has to be interesting and have impact right away as there is no guarantee that your target audience will read the piece and you can’t gauge how they will react to it.

Expressing your vision in writing is probably going to be a difficult exercise – some are naturally gifted when it comes to words, others are not. The principles that follow, however, should help to make the process a little easier. They can be applied to any important communications addressed to teams or peers.

Write from the heart

• The best way to trigger interest is to establish an emotional ‘hook’ that ‘catches’ the invisible audience.
• Whenever possible, start your communication with something the audience will easily relate to, that will ‘talk’ to them.
• Starting with words such as, ‘Our company’, ‘business unit’ or simply ‘We’, or opening with a controversial, witty or personal story can also act as powerful hooks. The ‘I have a dream’ opening of Martin Luther King’s speech or the ‘It was the best of times, it was the worse of times’ start to Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities are great examples of this.
• Because, you need to appeal to different people with different backgrounds, cultures and histories, your hooks will need to be different each time. Consider having tailor-made introductions and conclusions to cater for different regions and cultural backgrounds. You can even consider having the entire vision document translated into different languages. It may sound like unnecessary work in a business world still largely dominated by English, but it can guarantee a heightened commitment from the employees concerned. You will not only show your cultural awareness, but also engage with them at a more profound level.

Structure and clarity

• Construct your communication so that it has a clear start, middle and end. Apart from the emotional hook at the beginning, the audience needs to believe in the vision, so make it compelling and achievable by adding facts and figures or any relevant hard data to support your case.
• Clarity is also important – clarity of language and clarity of message. Focus on a few themes using concise and simple vocabulary – it will read better.
• Identify and stick to your purpose – what do you expect from the communication?
• To secure commitment to your vision and trigger action, it is preferable to end on an inspiring note, depicting what the future will look like or how one person will feel in that future.
• Words expressing achievement, legacy or a sense of accomplishment can be valuable as endings (for a supreme example refer back to Churchill’s words above).

Work and rework

• Finding the right structure, length, balance, imagery and rhythm takes time.
• You can choose to write everything that comes into your head without constraints. This is usually best achieved by imagining that you are talking to yourself about your vision. Write as much as you can, until you feel that there is nothing more you have to say.
• You can choose to repeat in your head what it is you want to say and how you want to say it, just as if you were preparing for a speech. When you feel ready, sit down and put on paper or screen what will sound like an already largely structured piece.
• Either way, dedicate an adequate amount of time to editing what you’ve written. The best questions to ask yourself while editing are these.
  • Does it flow?
  • Is it logical?
  • Is it interesting?
  • What does this particular part add to the argument?
  • What do I really want to say here?
• Consider reading your piece out loud during the editing process. You will very quickly identify the good and the not-so-good parts, the elements missing or the unnecessary or irrelevant ones this way.
• Finally, test the impact and clarity of your statements by reading what you have written to a person in your feedback group and ask him or her to read it to you, so you can slip into the audience’s shoes and gauge that the impact is what you would expect. Consider letting it rest for a couple of days and revisit it cold, to measure if the impact is still the same. You will then be ready to print and post it or press the ‘send’ button.

Timing

• When to communicate is as important as what to communicate.
• Your purpose is to have an impact, gain commitment and inspire action. Make sure you publish your words when the circumstances will be ideal for achieving the desired impact. Typically, avoid Monday mornings as people are barely back into work mode. Friday evenings may or may not work – on the one hand, people are more relaxed towards the weekend, but on the other hand they might have already switched off. Midweek is generally a sensible time to send e-mail messages.

Some final pointers

It takes practice to produce effective written communication, so it is important to increase the number of times you do so – send messages to your team and others above and beyond your vision statement. Establishing a schedule of written communication that mirrors announcement cycles for financial results (quarterly, twice a year) or your reward and recognition cycle (see Chapter 11) can prove efficient and maintain the bond staff have with your organisation. Consider, too, communicating with them when there are major events in your organisation or industry. The bottom line is, communicate when you have something interesting to share or important to say.

Summary

Successful vision building is not simply a matter of the vision statement appearing on the front page of the annual report. It happens when the vision becomes part of the essence of the organisation.

If you can see that anyone joining or entering your organisation for the first time feels the sense of purpose in the people around them, then you have done a magnificent job with your vision building. A vision needs to also change and evolve. Never be complacent, always keep trying to reach for the mission and find the next mountain to climb.

The following quote from leadership guru Peter Drucker³ perfectly sums this up:

‘One day a traveller, walking along a lane, came across three stonecutters working in a quarry. Each was busy cutting a block of stone. Interested to find out what they were working on, the traveller asked them what they were doing.

The first stonecutter replied: “I am making a living.”

The second kept on hammering while he said: “I am doing the best job of stone cutting in the entire country.”

The third stonecutter, when asked the same question said: “I am building a cathedral.”’

Here’s a reminder of some of the key points from this chapter:

• mission feeds vision and vision feeds strategy and each is a distinct concept to be clear about – mission is the star to reach, vision is the mountain to climb, strategy is the route to take
• the purpose of vision building is to prompt actions towards achieving a certain future – it needs to resonate with the purpose and values of the organisation and the leaders and address the question, ‘What’s in for me?’ for the staff
• innovation is an important aspect to keep in mind when vision building as it will help push the boundaries of what it is the organisation can achieve, but it is not essential
• the ability to be innovative can be developed by means of questioning, observing, curiosity, openness and networking, increasing the number and types of experiences you have and building and maintaining a wide frame of reference
• a vision can only be successful if agreement and passion for it cascades down to all teams, which can result from co-creation and communication using a wide variety of tools, including video or even social media
• effective communication, both oral and written, that draws on emotion, passion and conviction and can articulate what is in it for the staff will win their commitment to it
• how the vision is communicated can be left to the direct leaders of the teams, using storytelling techniques, cultural references and so on, to create emotional bonds with their audiences.

¹ The term ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goal’ (BHAG) was coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras (1994) in their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, HarperBusiness.

² Robert Iger (2011) ‘The HBR interview: Technology, tradition, and the Mouse’, Harvard Business Review, July.

³ Peter Drucker (2008) The Essential Drucker: The best of sixty years of Peter Drucker’s essential writings on management, Collins Business Essentials, HarperBusiness.