Anatomy of a Vision Statement

"It sure looks pretty," John said as he turned to Susan and flashed a cynical smile.

"You mean it sounds pretty?" Susan asked, confused.

"No, I mean it looks pretty." John reached out and reverently put his hand on the elegant plaque.  "Sort of makes you want to...what?  Kneel down?"

Susan laughed nervously.  "It doesn't make me want to kneel down."

"You're right," John said.  "It makes you want to...to...laugh."  He looked at her seriously and then exploded in laughter.

Susan looked around.  "John, stop.  Someone will hear you.  This is our vision statement, for heaven's sake."

John flicked the plaque with his index finger.  "Vision? Really?  I didn't know.  I thought it was entertainment for visitors."  He shook his head and walked away.

Susan studied the vision statement for a few minutes.  She concluded that John was politically incorrect - and right.

Visions and Baloney

                We've got vision, but we can't see.  That seems to be the situation in many companies.  We can't live without vision, although organizations do manage to extend their death throes for several years in a vision-less state.  And very often, we can't live with vision either - at least not with the concepts that so often masquerade as a guide to the future.

                The vision statements of many organizations make their readers feel as if they are drowning in warm maple syrup.  Just listen to some of these excerpts:

                "We will exceed our customers' expectations every day in every way." (Best Products Co.)

                "Building on the base of our proud past, we're now creating our own future." (Austin Industries)

                "Giving our customers...what they want all the time, every time, on time." (Gerber)

                Reading enough corporate vision statements can lead a person to conclude that the ideal statement for many organizations would read something like this: We are a terrific organization made up of terrific employees who provide our terrific customers with terrific products and services.  God bless us everyone.

                Statements like this don't do justice to a company's core values.  Or is it that these statements come into being because we don't have any core values to begin with?

                And then there's the other side of the coin, where we betray how crude our core values really are: "...[M]ission is to deliver long-term growth in earnings per share and shareholder value" (Chiquita Brands).  That's it.  It's doubtful that people will line up to sacrifice themselves to make such dreams come true.

The Need for Vision

                Does a company really need vision anyway?  The interest in developing a corporate vision has faded of late, largely because the statements do not inspire any change or growth, feel "real" or connect with most people's deep aspirations.  In addition, the following factors have led managers to shy away from creating a vision:

• We don't want to admit how narcissistic our vision really is.
• We think it will be too much trouble to incorporate everyone in the process, and we already know what we want.
• We don't really have a vision because we're just "doing business" so we call what we don't have "unnecessary."
• We've built our organization on adversarial principles, so a common vision is not achievable.

The fact is, every company does need a vision if it wants to go somewhere and be able to know when it has arrived.  This need may seem less obvious in an autocratic organization, where people simply do as they're told and have very little idea of where the company is headed.  But even the autocrat needs a blueprint to follow while dictating the company into the future.

A unifying, clarifying vision is all the more important to the interdependent organization in which leaders expect their people to participate in the process of delivering (and, in the best of cases, helping to create) the vision.  In my opinion, we need vision for a number of critical reasons:

• To guide us. Like the stars that have guided sailors to their destinations and safe harbors for millennia, an articulated vision leads us from point to point on our organizational journey. It also aligns our various priorities and goals and keeps us from fragmenting.
• To remind us. The same organization that can remember one of its mistakes for years can forget what it represents and wants to become in a matter of months. Like the Declaration of Independence, a vision should be something we can reflect on during the coming years to remember the important "whys."
• To inspire us. People, at least the sane ones who have a life, are not inspired by work in and of itself. Rather, they are inspired by the purpose of work, the result of work and the transcendent priorities and goals it encompasses.
• To control us. When we get the "crazies" and start wandering into unrelated businesses or Core Incompetencies^TM, our vision statement can snap us back to reality.
• To free us. It's hard to have a forward-looking, high-performance organization when we don't know who we are or what we want to become. The events of our past push us along with their inertia, to a chorus of "this is the way we've always done it" in the past. A living vision pulls us loose from that mire and opens the door to a fresh future.

The Illusion of Vision

                Unfortunately, the visions of most organizations don't serve them in these ways.  In my experience, most employees are barely aware of their organizations vision.  Much less do they understand, accept, believe in or buy into it.

                In such companies, the corporate vision plays little, if any, role in guiding people's daily efforts.  Instead, they squander that energy on "doing their jobs," playing organizational politics, covering up their mistakes, fixing blame rather than problems and, in general, trying to stay out of trouble.

                It staggers the imagination to think of how effective individual organizations and the economy would be if this vast expenditure of energy was directed toward truly useful and productive tasks - such as anticipating and providing products and services that will meet people's real future needs.

                How do we know if our organizational vision is only an illusion?  Here are some signs of such a crippling situation:

• It's never brought up in strategy or planning sessions.
• Employees who have been with us for more than 30 days can't tell us what the vision means to them personally - which is different from reciting it from memory - or how it relates to their daily priorities.
• We "finish" the "vision thing" and move on to other projects or initiatives, forgetting that our vision is neither a project nor an initiative. The absence of ongoing dialogue, employee training and development of the vision are all clues that this is just an illusion.
• Our people tell us in an anonymous survey (and we should conduct such a survey) that our vision statement sounds good but really is useless or meaningless.

When a vision statement amounts to fiction, it can actually lower the company's morale and long-term effectiveness.  How so?  The results are bound to be negative if we say that people are our most important resource, but treat them like they are our biggest pain in the neck.  If we say that employee safety is important, but day after day tell stories about employees who take risks to meet deadlines, customer needs, etc.  If we say we care for all of our stakeholders, but use downsizing, rightsizing, dumping and demanding to drive a stake through the heart of our human resources.  If we say we're innovative and customer-focused, but live in a zone of indifference and regularly decide "they can live with that."

A vision that is denied in day-to-day life, even in small ways, is a dead vision.  Even worse, it 's a vampire that will come back to haunt us, mock us and drain the life out of us.

The good news is that a vision doesn't have to be pure illusion.  If we're willing to sweat through a process of making it real and articulating it clearly, rather than just creating the illusion of a vision, we can allow our stakeholders to drive a stake through that vampire's heart.

 The Visioning Process

                 A vision statement will be worth more than the paper (or plastic) it's printed on when it becomes a driving force and compels people to do something, change something, become something.  That means it must pass the "baloney test" and get to the heart of the organization, answering key questions about its competitive strengths.

                The statement also needs to be a "living" document that incorporates the best of the organization's past into an ideal yet feasible view of the future.  Only then will people do more than just buy into the image; they'll actually own it.

                Creating such a statement is not an easy task, but a necessary one nonetheless.  What does this hard work involve?  Here are the critical components of a visioning process:

• We have to know who we are before we can decide where we want to go. This means we have to do some serious soul searching. Who are we, really? Why are we? What are our core values? What are our core competencies (and incompetencies)? Writing a vision statement without a clear answer to these questions is akin to a doctor writing a prescription without examining the patient. We'll end up with a wart-like philosophy such as "growth."
• We need widespread input on these issues that goes beyond the advice of consultants or the results of benchmarking (read "copying from") other organizations. The input must also come from - especially from - our people. The visioning process must be intelligently planned to ensure that the results are comprehensive and inclusive. Managers also need to prevent the process from succumbing to the lowest common denominator; a false consensus can result in a vision that does not offend anyone, but that also fails to challenge and motivate employees.
• We must describe the vision in enough detail that we can be held accountable. People must be able to look at a specific clause and know whether or not we (or they) are living up to it. It needs to stretch us without stressing us. More than making us feel good, a vision needs to make us feel a little uncomfortable.
• We need to support the implementation of the vision. If we want it to permeate organizational life, we must devote as much (or more) time to our ideal after we've developed the vision statement as we did when creating it. For example, we must describe its implications to people, train employees to understand what it means to them, create continuous learning processes to nurture the vision's deep roots and broad branches, develop mechanisms to apply it, communicate the vision through many forums (particularly stories) and revise it as it gains life during its implementation.

 Not Too Much, Not Too Little

                 A vision statement - the articulation of a company's vision - can be too long or too short, too detailed or too terse.  Either imbalance will create problems.  If the statement contains too much detail, the following problems will arise:  It becomes less a statement of vision than a list of plans or priorities; it loses its "timeless" nature and becomes a short-term agenda; it contains more detail than people can retain as a guide; and it loses focus and paints to broad a picture.

                Conversely, a vision statement with too little detail has these problems:  It can become so elevated that it doesn't ring true for employees; people can't relate it to their everyday pressures, decisions and actions; it makes us seem interchangeable with a thousand other organizations; and it trivializes the complexity, problems and uniqueness of our organization.

                Organizations, like people, need to make a difference.  But it's hard to make a difference if we don't set out to do so - or if there's nothing about us that is truly and specifically different.

                We can do many things well, but we can't do all things well.  A carefully considered and articulated vision helps us know who we are and who we aren't, what we do successfully and what we don't, what we should take on and what we should gladly drop.

                The alternative - mindless meandering - is a sorry fate.