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The Power of Vision

Jesse Stoner, Ken Blanchard, and Drea Zigarmi

When leaders who are leading at a higher level understand the role of the quadruple bottom line as the right target—to be the employer of choice, provider of choice, investment of choice, and corporate citizen of choice—they are ready to focus everyone’s energy on a compelling vision.

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.

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 everyone to serve. In fewer than 10 percent of the organizations Jesse visited, members were 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 quadruple 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’s 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.”

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.

• 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.

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 have always wanted to go to Disney World, SeaWorld, or other attractions in Orlando can get a chance through Give Kids the World. Since 1986, the organization has brought more than 160,000 children and 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 serving the folks who come to Give Kids the World.

When work is meaningful and connected to what you truly desire, you 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.

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.

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. 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 quadruple bottom line was served, demonstrated by the company’s long-term gains in reputation and profitability.

Many organizations that do have values have too many. 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.⁴ They also found that for some organizations, rank ordering values can be helpful. Why? Because life is about value conflicts. When these conflicts arise, it’s helpful for people to know which value they should focus on.

For example, 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.” In this situation, there was a value conflict, and the cast member couldn’t act on two values at the same time.

While having rank-ordered values is helpful in companies like Disney, it’s not always necessary. As we discussed in the introduction, in our company we have a both/and philosophy, so we have three people-oriented values and three results-oriented values. In each of those categories, one value is not more important than the other. Therefore, we decided that all the values need to be considered when making decisions.

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.

Time and again research shows that an essential characteristic of great leaders is their ability to mobilize people around a shared vision.⁷

If it’s not in the 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 are perennially all too evident.

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 operate according to 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. He 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 quadruple 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!”

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.

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.

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 the vision 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.

• 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.”

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, the leader’s role moves to implementation to ensure that people respond to the vision. Now the traditional hierarchical pyramid turns upside-down as the leader supports people in accomplishing the vision (see Figure 2.2).

The leader supports 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 the leader assures that everyone is serving the vision, not the leader.

In their book Gung Ho! Turn On the People in Any Organization, Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles describe the three factors that make a compelling organizational vision come alive.⁶

First, people need to have worthwhile work. In many ways, that’s what this chapter has been all about. People need a higher purpose and shared values that guide all plans, decisions, and actions. Worthwhile work gets people up in the morning with a spring in their step.

Second, people need to be in control of achieving the goal. When people know why they are working and where they’re going, they want to bring their brains to work. Being responsible demands people’s best and allows them to learn and act like owners.

Third, to continue to generate energy, people need to cheer each other on. Of all the things we’ve taught over the years, we can’t overemphasize the power of catching each other doing things right and accentuating the positive.

Being in control of achieving the goals and cheering each other on turn our focus to Section II, “Treat Your People Right.” In this section, we will explore both aspects of leadership: the visionary/direction role—with an emphasis on goal setting—and the implementation role—with an emphasis on goal accomplishment.