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Thoughts About Vision (Part 1)

Posted on December 4, 2015 by James Scouller

“Vision” (like the word “values”) has lost its shine in the last 20 years and these days many people see vision statements as waffle, bulls**t and a waste of time. Others confuse vision with mission. Either way, the idea of having a vision statement to guide your action blueprint and raise motivation is one that’s often aired, but it’s rarely discussed convincingly in my experience.

So I’m offering these thoughts after 12 years of coaching individual leaders and groups of executives. They come in four parts, which I’ll publish over the next four days.

Part 1 is “Typical Problems with Vision”. Part 2 is “Why You Need a Vision”. Part 3 Is “Profile of an Effective Vision” and part 4 is “The Difference between Mission and Vision.” This series starts with part 1: Typical Problems with Vision.

You’ll often find they are…

Bland: meaning they are uninteresting, uninspiring and make no difference to a firm’s action agenda. This is frequently – but not always – because they are missions rather than visions (see part 4 on the difference between mission and vision). Sometimes it’s because executives spend so much time talking in “management speak” they don’t realise they’ve lumbered their vision statements with cliché after cliché. You can guarantee that cliché-ridden statements will be ignored.

Superficial: they are built on sand. There’s no effort or rigour behind them. And no choices either. You see these often. They are the, “Customers will love us, suppliers will think we are marvellous, employees will want to work here, shareholders will be thrilled and we’ll all go to heaven” style visions. Happily-ever-after stuff for everybody. Except that all they evoke is disinterest at best and mockery at worst.

Too centred on shareholders: these concentrate on market capitalisation. Here’s the problem: most employees don’t care about shareholders – not at a personal level anyway. To them, shareholders aren’t real people, they are faceless investors or even gamblers. That’s why such visions don’t usually motivate them.

Too centred on corporate leaders: these are the visions that emphasise bigness. Often bigness as expressed in $ turnover. I’ve found that the people who get really excited about such visions are the top six or seven executives. The rest don’t care. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t mind their top executives going for big targets, but the targets don’t especially motivate them to achieve new levels of excellence, ingenuity and resilience.

Empty: these are the visions that lack performance goals, that lack a blueprint for action, behind which there’s no determination to follow through. They are just words, just hot air. Unfortunately, there are plenty of them around. Boy, do they give “vision” a bad name.

We’ll look at part 2 – Why You Need a Vision – tomorrow.

The author is James Scouller, an executive coach. His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published in May 2011. You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com. If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews. If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE. You can read more about his executive coaching services at The Scouller Partnership’s website.

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