THE POWER OF VISION

For a CEO, creating and communicating a powerful vision provides direction. And when the CEO aligns the organization’s energies and resources to the vision, the future state transforms from abstract to real.  

“Vision” means a future so clear and compellingly attractive that it re-organizes who we are and what we do today. This future is not a prediction. It is a creation. It exists not in some time years hence, but right now, this very moment as a possibility we have spoken into existence. A vision’s power to reorganize who we are and what we do, therefore, depends upon how we speak and listen to each other and how we relate to our word. It is not a merely personal, individual phenomenon. It is an interpersonal exchange of meaning that transforms people’s relationships with each other and with their work. 

A powerful vision inspires energy, commitment, and alignment to a new future, especially when co-created in dialogue with key stakeholders. As a community forms around a vision, it becomes a co-creation rather than the property of the originator. This community of commitment finds ways to evolve and strengthen the vision as they individually and collectively explore its implications for their work and their lives. This co-creative process builds strength into the connections required to act together. People listen to each other and explore their own understanding of the vision. They may argue and debate its implications, but with proper leadership, the arguments increase the group’s clarity and cohesiveness.

Of course, not everyone will be attracted to a particular future, so a vision also functions as both an attractor and a filter. It is a way of shaping a community of commitment that will invest energy and resources toward the common future you are initiating. Those who don’t or can’t see themselves in the vision, whether customers, employees, or partners, should be given ample time either to discover their connection or accept a humane path to fulfilling their own.

A powerful vision is compelling. It asserts a stretch and a provocation. It shakes people out of their current mode of thinking. It challenges the assumed limits of what is and is not possible. A well-constructed vision ought to surprise and delight or outrage and even anger the listener. These are signs that the vision has power.

Here are some examples:

“The U.S. should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” -John F. Kennedy

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  -Martin Luther King Jr.

“I want every girl, every child to be educated.” -Malala Yousafsai

“My vision, my hope, is simply this: that many business leaders will come to see a primary role of business as incubators of the human spirit, rather than factories for the production of more material goods and services.” -Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop

“… a computer in every home and on every desk.” -Bill Gates

“To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone.” -R. Buckminster Fuller

As you read these, you may have noticed yourself evaluating their reasonableness. Kennedy’s has been accomplished, and Gates’s seems inevitable. However, when Kennedy and Gates announced their visions, nothing was predictable or inevitable about them. 

The other visions shared here may feel different to you. For example, it may seem we are still far from a time when all children can expect to be judged on the content of their character alone, free from discrimination based on their skin color. It may seem a distant dream that all children will be educated or that the world could work for 100% of humanity.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”   ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

Forgiving the outdated gender reference in the above quotation, the point of a vision is not to be reasonable. The point is to be unreasonable. It is the unreasonable vision that stimulates the spontaneous collaboration Bucky Fuller articulated in his vision. Most vision statements are tepid predictions, not bold declarations. A compelling vision comes from a person who has the courage to be unreasonable. The leader who puts such a vision into the world invites criticism, even ridicule. They expect this and do not take it as justification for backing away. Instead, they see this as evidence that the vision is doing its job of sorting the willing from the unwilling.

Here are a few questions to help you evaluate your vision, or if you are creating one, to guide and sharpen you in the process:

• Is it bold?
• Does it provoke you and others?
• Does it scare you? Others?
• Does it make you want to live long enough to see it fulfilled?
• Does it make some people want to take early retirement?
• Does it offer a compelling new future to all your constituencies, not just your shareholders?

If it does none of these things, keep working on it. Let the inquiry peel back layers of reasonableness and cynicism until you touch a place within yourself that wants to put a dent in the universe. That’s the authentic center out of which you can lead. What is your vision?