Crafting A Vision
Annual Visioning Retreat: three words that sound like they were freshly pumped out of the corporate jargonator. Three words that can get the wizened employee digging into his or her deepest bag of meeting avoidance tricks.
Annual Visioning horrors start with arduous cross-functional, cross-divisional, cross-hierarchical debates over what the true vision of the company is. By the end of these visioning gone wrong sessions:
a. newly rival camps may be clinging to their own favourite vision drafts
b. the entire group may be lost in a whorl of wordsmithing
c. the CEO may slap down the vision he or she had been planning to use all along
d. the group agrees on a vision. They proudly capture it on paper, frame it on the wall, paste it on the website and never think of it again.
See you next year!
Yet, some form of a clear vision – written, drawn, sculpted… – is key to keeping the entrepreneur moving forward with purpose and clarity. Pivots are inevitable, tactics may change, but the company vision offers a target destination. Every employee should know the vision of the company. Their ongoing input is invaluable in shaping strategies to get the company there.
A Formal Company Vision is :
1. A concise ‘statement’ that lays out your company’s big picture, mid to long-term goals (often ~ 3 to 5 years, depending on the industry)
2. Externally oriented, internally relevant
3. Aspirational. What kind of impact do you want to have on the world?
The Best Visions are:
4. Uniquely identifiable. Would people know it’s your company by reading the vision?
5. Memorable
6. Brief
7. Actionable. Can it help you make decisions? Can it point you and other employees where to go when you reach a fork in the road?
