Chapter 2
The Power of Vision
When leaders who are leading at a higher level understand the role of the triple bottom line as the right target—to be the provider of choice, employer of choice, and investment of choice—they are ready to focus everyone’s energy on a compelling vision.
Alice learned this lesson in Alice in Wonderland when she was searching for a way out of Wonderland and came to a fork in the road. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” she asked the Cheshire Cat. “That depends a good deal on where you want to go,” the cat responded. Alice replied that she really did not much care. The smiling cat told her in no uncertain terms: “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
Jesse Stoner conducted an extensive study that demonstrated the powerful impact of vision and leadership on organizational performance.1 She collected information from the team members of more than 500 leaders. The results were striking. Leaders who demonstrated strong visionary leadership had the highest-performing teams. Leaders with good management skills but without vision had average team performance. Leaders who were identified as weak in vision and management skills had poor-performing teams.
The biggest impediment blocking most managers from being great leaders is the lack of a clear vision for them to serve. In fewer than 10 percent of the organizations we have visited were members clear about the vision. This lack of shared vision causes people to become inundated with multiple priorities, duplication of efforts, false starts, and wasted energy—none of which supports the triple bottom line.
A vision builds trust, collaboration, interdependence, motivation, and mutual responsibility for success. Vision helps people make smart choices, because their decisions are being made with the end result in mind. As goals are accomplished, the answer to “What next?” becomes clear. Vision allows us to act from a proactive stance, moving toward what we want rather than reactively away from what we don’t want. Vision empowers and excites us to reach for what we truly desire. As the late management guru Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
Effective Versus Ineffective Vision Statements
A lot of organizations already have vision statements, but most of them seem irrelevant when you look at the organization and where it’s going. The purpose of a vision statement is to create an aligned organization where everyone is working together toward the same desired ends.
How do you know if your vision statement works? Here’s the test: Is it hidden in a forgotten file or framed on a wall solely for decoration? If so, it’s not working. Is it actively used to guide everyday decision making? If the answer is yes, your vision statement is working.
Creating a Vision That Really Works
Why don’t more leaders have a vision? We believe it’s a lack of knowledge. Many leaders—such as former president George H. W. Bush—say they just don’t get the “vision thing.” They acknowledge that vision is desirable, but they’re unsure how to create it. To these leaders, vision seems elusive—something that is magically bestowed only on the fortunate few. Intrigued by the possibility of making vision accessible for all leaders, Jesse Stoner teamed up with Drea Zigarmi to identify the key elements of a compelling vision—one that would inspire people and provide direction. In “From Vision to Reality,” Jesse and Drea identified three key elements of a compelling vision:2
• Significant purpose: What business are you in?
• A picture of the future: What will the future look like if you are successful?
• Clear values: What guides your behavior and decisions on a daily basis?
A vision must include all three elements to be inspiring and enduring. Let’s explore these elements with some real-world examples.
Significant Purpose
The first element of a compelling vision is a significant purpose. This higher purpose is your organization’s reason for existence. It answers the question “Why?” rather than just explaining what you do. It clarifies, from your customers’ viewpoint, what business you are really in.
CNN is in the “hard spot news-breaking business.” Their customers are busy people who need breaking news on demand. Their business is to provide hard news as it unfolds—not to provide entertainment. According to CNN, the typical family today is too busy to sit in front of the television at 7 p.m. Dad has a second job, Mom is working late, and the kids are involved in activities. Therefore, CNN’s purpose is to provide news 24 hours a day. This helps CNN employees answer the questions “What are my priorities?” and “Where should I focus my energy?”
Walt Disney started his theme parks with a clear purpose. He said, “We’re in the happiness business.” That is very different from being in the theme park business. Clear purpose drives everything the cast members (employees) do with their guests (customers). Being in the happiness business helps cast members understand their primary role in the company.
A wonderful organization in Orlando, Florida, called Give Kids the World, is an implementation operation for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Dying children who always wanted to go to Disney World, SeaWorld, or other attractions in Orlando can get a chance through Give Kids the World. Over the years, the organization has brought more than 50,000 families to Orlando for a week at no cost to them. The organization thinks having a sick child is a family issue; therefore, the whole family goes to Orlando. When you ask the employees what business they are in, they tell you they’re in the memory business—they want to create memories for these kids and their families.
On a visit to Give Kids the World, one of our colleagues passed a man who was cutting the grass. Curious about how widely understood the organization’s mission was, our colleague asked the man, “What business are you in here at Give Kids the World?”
The man smiled and said, “We make memories.”
“How do you make memories?” our associate asked. “You just cut the grass.”
The man said, “I certainly don’t make memories by continuing to cut the grass if a family comes by. You can always tell who the sick kid is, so I ask that youngster whether he or she or a brother or sister wants to help me with my chores.”
Isn’t that a wonderful attitude? It keeps him focused on servicing the folks who come to Give Kids the World.
When work is meaningful and connected to what we truly desire, we can unleash a productive and creative power we never imagined. But purpose alone is not enough, because it does not tell you where you’re going.
A Picture of the Future
The second element of a compelling vision is a picture of the future. This picture of the end result should not be abstract. It should be a mental image you can actually see. The power of imagery has been described by many sports psychologists, including Charles Garfield in Peak Performance: Mental Training Techniques of the World’s Greatest Athletes. Numerous studies have demonstrated that not only does mental imagery enhance performance, but it enhances intrinsic motivation as well.3
CNN’s picture of the future is not something vague like being the premier network news station or being “number one.” It’s a picture you can actually create a mental image of: “To be viewed in every nation on the planet in English and in the language of that region.”
Walt Disney’s picture of the future was expressed in the charge he gave every cast member: “Keep the same smile on people’s faces when they leave the park as when they entered.” Disney didn’t care whether a guest was in the park two hours or ten hours. He just wanted to keep them smiling. After all, they were in the happiness business. Your picture should focus on the end result, not the process of getting there.
At Give Kids the World, their picture of the future is that in the last week of the lives of youngsters who have been there, they will still be laughing and talking to their families about their time in Orlando.
Some people mistakenly use the Apollo Moon Project as an example of a vision. It is a wonderful example of the power of creating a picture of the future, but it’s not an example of a vision. In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy articulated a picture of the future—to place a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s and bring him home safely—the United States had not even invented the technology to accomplish it. To achieve that goal, NASA overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles, demonstrating the power of articulating a picture of the future. However, once the goal was achieved, NASA never re-created its spectacular achievement, because it was not linked to a significant purpose. There was nothing to answer the question “Why?” Was the purpose to “beat the Russians” or to “begin the Space Defense Initiative” or—in the spirit of Star Trek—“to boldly go where no one has gone before”? Because there was no clear purpose, there was no way to guide decision making going forward and answer the question “What next?” The second element—a picture of the future—is powerful, but it alone does not create an enduring vision.
Clear Values
The third element of a compelling vision is having clear values. High performing organizations have clear values. Values define leadership and how employees act on a day-to-day basis while doing their work.
Values provide guidelines for how you should proceed as you pursue your purpose and picture of the future. They answer the questions “What do I want to live by?” and “How?” They need to be clearly described so that you know exactly what behaviors demonstrate that the value is being lived. Values need to be consistently acted on, or they are only good intentions. They need to resonate with the personal values of the members of the organization so that people truly choose to live by them.
The values need to support the organization’s purpose. Because CNN is in the journalism business, not the entertainment business, its values are “to provide accurate, responsible journalism and to be responsive to the news needs of people around the world.” These values help reporters and producers make on-the-spot decisions about news coverage and would be quite different if CNN were in the entertainment business.
Robert Johnson founded Johnson & Johnson for the purpose of alleviating pain and disease. The company’s purpose and values, reflected in its credo, continue to guide the company. Using its values to guide its decision making, Johnson & Johnson quickly recalled all Tylenol capsules throughout the United States during a 1982 tampering incident that was localized in the Chicago area. The immediate cost was substantial, but not knowing the extent of the tampering, the company didn’t want to risk anyone’s safety. In the end, Johnson & Johnson’s triple bottom line was served, demonstrated by the company’s long-term gains in reputation and profitability.
Most organizations that do have values either have too many values or have not rank-ordered them.4 Research done by Ken Blanchard and Michael O’Connor shows that people can’t focus on more than three or four values that really impact behavior. They also found that values must be rank-ordered to be effective. Why? Because life is about value conflicts. When these conflicts arise, people need to know which value they should focus on.
The Disney theme parks have four rank-ordered values: safety, courtesy, the show, and efficiency. Why is safety the highest-ranked value? Walt Disney knew that if guests were carried out of one of his parks on a stretcher, they would not have the same smiles on their faces leaving the park as they had when they entered.
The second-ranked value, courtesy, is all about the friendly attitude you expect at a Disney park. Why is it important to know that it’s the number-two value? Suppose one of the Disney cast members is answering a guest question in a friendly, courteous manner, and he hears a scream that’s not coming from a roller coaster. If that cast member wants to act according to the park’s rank-ordered values, he will excuse himself as quickly and politely as possible and race toward the scream. Why? Because the number-one value just called. If the values were not rank-ordered and the cast member was enjoying the interaction with the guest, he might say, “They’re always yelling in the park,” and not move in the direction of the scream. Later somebody could come to that cast member and say, “You were the closest to the scream. Why didn’t you move?” The response could be, “I was dealing with our courtesy value.” Life is a series of value conflicts. There will be times when you can’t act on two values at the same time.
For a vision to endure, you need all three elements—a significant purpose, a picture of the future, and clear values—to guide behavior on a day-by-day basis. Martin Luther King, Jr. outlined his vision in his “I Have a Dream” speech. By describing a world where his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” he created powerful and specific images arising from the values of brotherhood, respect, and freedom for all—values that resonate with the founding values of the United States. King’s vision continues to mobilize and guide people beyond his lifetime because it illuminates a significant purpose, provides a picture of the future, and describes values that resonate with people’s hopes and dreams.
A Compelling Vision Creates a Culture of Greatness
A compelling vision creates a strong culture in which the energy of everyone in the organization is aligned. This results in trust, customer satisfaction, an energized and committed workforce, and profitability. Conversely, when an organization does not live up to its stated values, employee and customer trust and commitment erode, negatively impacting all aspects of the bottom line. For example, Ford lost credibility and market share when its stated value—“Quality Is Job One”—was tested by its hesitation to take responsibility in the recall of the defective Firestone tires on its Explorer sport utility vehicle in 2000.5
Vision Is the Place to Start
Research clearly demonstrates the extraordinary impact of a shared vision, or core ideology, on long-term financial performance. The cumulative stock returns of the HPOs researched by Collins and Porras were six times greater than the “successful” companies they examined and 15 times greater than the general market over a 50-year period of time!6 For this reason, vision is the place to start if you want to improve your organization’s HPO SCORES and hit the target.
Research has demonstrated time and again that an essential characteristic of great leaders is their ability to mobilize people around a shared vision.7
If it’s not in service of a shared vision, leadership can become self-serving. Leaders begin to think their people are there to serve them, instead of the customer. Organizations can become self-serving bureaucracies where leaders focus their energies on recognition, power, and status, rather than the organization’s larger purpose and goals. The results of this type of behavior have been all too evident recently at Enron, WorldCom, and others.
Once the leader has clarified and shared the vision, he can focus on serving and being responsive to the needs of the people, understanding that the role of leadership is to remove barriers and help people achieve the vision. The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision. Sometimes leaders don’t get it at first, but the great ones eventually do.
Louis Gerstner, Jr. is a perfect example. When Gerstner took the helm of IBM in 1993—amidst turmoil and instability as the company’s annual net losses reached a record $8 billion—he was quoted as saying, “The last thing IBM needs is a vision.” A lot of people asked us what we thought about that statement. Our reply was, “It depends on how he defines vision. If he means a ‘pie-in-the-sky’ dream, he’s absolutely right. The ship is sinking. But if all he’s doing is plugging the holes, the ship isn’t going anywhere.” We were amused to read an article in The New York Times8 two years later. In that article, Gerstner conceded that IBM had lost the war for the desktop operating system, acknowledging that the acquisition of Lotus signified that the company had failed to plan properly for its future. He admitted that he and his management team now “spent a lot of time thinking ahead.” Once Gerstner understood the importance of vision, an incredible turnaround occurred. It became clear that the company’s source of strength would be in integrated solutions and resisted pressures to split the company. In 1995, delivering the keynote address at the computer industry trade show, Gerstner articulated IBM’s new vision—that network computing would drive the next phase of industry growth and would be the company’s overarching strategy. That year, IBM began a series of acquisitions that positioned services to become the company’s fastest-growing segment, with growth at more than 20 percent per year. This extraordinary turnaround demonstrated that the most important thing IBM needed was a vision—a shared vision.
If an organization’s vision is compelling, the triple bottom line is served. Success goes way beyond mere financial rewards. Vision generates tremendous energy, excitement, and passion, because people feel they are making a difference. They know what they are doing and why. There is a strong sense of trust and respect. Managers don’t try to control, but rather let others assume responsibility, because people know they are part of an aligned whole. People assume responsibility for their own actions. They take charge of their future, rather than passively waiting for it to happen. There is room for creativity and risk taking. People can make their contributions in their own way, and those differences are respected, because people know they are in the same boat—all part of a larger whole going “full steam ahead!”
Vision Can Exist Anywhere in an Organization
You don’t have to wait for an organizational vision to begin. Vision is the responsibility of every leader at every level of the organization. It’s possible for leaders of departments or teams to create shared visions for their departments even when the rest of the organization doesn’t have one. Consider our work helping a tax department in a Fortune 500 company. The leader of the department stated:
“We began to understand our own and each others’ hopes and dreams and discovered how close they were. We found ways to work together more effectively and began to enjoy work a lot more. We discovered what business we were really in: ‘Providing financial information to help leaders make good business decisions.’ As a result, we began to partner more effectively with business leaders. Our department gained more credibility in the company, and other departments began asking us what we had done to make such a turnaround. They became interested in creating a vision for their own department. It was contagious.”
Too often, leaders complain that they can’t have a vision because the larger organization doesn’t have one. Again, it’s not necessary to wait. The power of vision will work for you and your team, regardless of your level in the organization.
Make Your Vision a Reality
In their book Full Steam Ahead! Unleash the Power of Vision in Your Company and Your Life, Ken Blanchard and Jesse Stoner define vision as “knowing who you are, where you’re going, and what will guide your journey.”9 Knowing who you are means having a significant purpose. Where you’re going means having a picture of the future. What will guide your journey are clear values. However, vision alone is not enough. For a leader to ensure that the vision becomes a reality—a shared vision that mobilizes people—Ken and Jesse identify three important guidelines that people must follow: How the vision is created, how it’s communicated, and how it’s lived.
How It’s Created
The process of creating the vision is as important as what the vision says. Instead of simply taking the top management to a retreat to put the vision together and then announcing it to others, encourage dialogue about the vision. While the initial responsibility for drafting an organizational vision rests with the top management, the organization needs to put in place mechanisms to give others an opportunity to help shape the vision—to put their thumbprint on it.
For a departmental or team vision, it’s possible to craft the vision as a team. Although the leader must have a sense of where he’s going, it’s important that he trusts and utilizes the knowledge and skills of the people on the team to get the best vision.
Regardless of how you initially draft the vision, it’s important that you get input from those it affects before you finalize it. Ask people these questions: “Would you like to work for an organization that has this vision? Can you see where you fit in the vision? Does it help you set priorities? Does it provide guidelines for making decisions? Is it exciting and motivating? Have we left anything out? Should we delete anything?” Involving people will deepen their understanding and commitment and create a better vision.
How It’s Communicated
Creating a vision—for your organization or department, for your work, and for your life—is a journey, not a one-time activity.
In some organizations, a vision statement may be found framed on the wall, but it provides no guidance or, worse, has nothing to do with the reality of how things actually are. This turns people off. Visioning is an ongoing process; you need to keep it alive. It’s important to keep talking about the vision and referring to it as much as possible. Max DePree, the legendary former chairman of Herman Miller and author of Leadership Is an Art, said that in his visionary role, he had to be like a third-grade teacher. He had to keep on saying it over and over and over until people got it right, right, right! The more you focus on your vision, the clearer it will become, and the more deeply you will understand it. In fact, aspects of what you thought was the vision may change over time, but its essence will remain.
How It’s Lived
The moment you identify your vision, you need to behave as if it were happening right now. Your actions need to be congruent with your vision. As others see you living the vision, they will believe you are serious, and this will help deepen their understanding and commitment. Two strategies will support your efforts to live your vision:
• Always focus on your vision. Your vision should be the foundation for your organization. If an obstacle or unforeseen event throws you off-course, you may have to change your short-term goals, but your vision should be long-lasting. Change is bound to happen. Unforeseen events are bound to occur. Find a way to reframe what is happening as a challenge or opportunity on the road to living your vision.
• Show the courage of commitment. True commitment begins when you take action. There will be fears; feel them and move ahead. It takes courage to create a vision, and it takes courage to act on it. In the words of Goethe, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
Vision and Leadership
Vision always comes back to leadership. People look to their formal leaders for vision and direction. While leaders should involve people in shaping direction, the ultimate responsibility for ensuring and maintaining a vision remains with the leaders and cannot be delegated to others. Creating a vision is not an activity that can be checked off a list. It’s one of the most critical ongoing roles of a successful leader. It means the difference between high and average performance, whether it’s an entire organization, a department, or a team.
Once a vision is agreed upon, it is up to the leader to ensure that people respond to the vision. The leader’s job is to support people in accomplishing the vision by removing barriers; by ensuring that policies, practices, and systems make it easier for them to act on the vision; and by holding themselves, their peers, and their people accountable for acting consistently with the vision. This way people serve the vision, not the leader.
Vision calls an organization to be truly great, not merely to beat the competition and get big numbers. A magnificent vision articulates people’s hopes and dreams, touches their hearts and spirits, and helps them see how they can contribute. It aims everyone in the right direction.
