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Creating a vision that can take advantage of the opportunity, meet the business objectives of the organization, and effectively energize the people who work in the organization is one of the most important and creative things that a manager can do. It can turn a manager into a leader. Many organizational vision statements have no spirit. They are weak and platitudinous. This type of formulation must be avoided. The vision will not only not accomplish what you want it to but will be detrimental to the morale of the organization. A vision:
Provides a bridge from the present to a future state
Is a target that beckons
Depicts a future state that does not exist and never existed before
Confers status
Bridges between the market, the business, and people
Energizes the organization
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To establish a vision, the organization must know how to learn what its members believe is important, credible, and relevant. Then it must identify the directions the members find exciting, develop a positive vision to embody this, and communicate it to the people in language they understand.
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Use both informal and formal channels of communication. Make sure that everyone shares in the vision including employees, customers, stakeholders, and suppliers. In the process of gaining support for the vision, the vision may need to be modified. Experience of many leaders has shown that it is wise to alter the vision to gain the maximum amount of support. It is important that the vision be communicated to and shared by the organization and its stakeholders.
Many surveys have been conducted in all cultures of what people want to accomplish with their lives. This kind of cultural information is basic to an understanding of the specific characteristics and values of the people in the organization. For example, the table below lists the top seven things Americans say they want out of their lives. To determine what the people in a particular organization want to accomplish with their lives, surveys, interviews, and focus groups can be designed and conducted. This, together with information for your culture, can be used to help formulate a vision.
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To create a vision:
Decide what will excite people.
Focus the vision on strategic advantages.
Think about how your organization adds value to others.
Make the vision simple enough to be used to make decisions.
Develop a strategy to gain a broad base of support for the vision.
State it in the present tense.
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What do Americans say they want out of life? (Summarized from over 100 attitude and opinion surveys.), David Pearce Snyder and Gregg Edwards, Future Forces, Foundation of the American Society of Associated Execu
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Visioning does not lend itself to linear processes. It is basically intuitive, holistic, iterative, and synthetic. It is advisable to work with a group of people who represent a cross section of the organization in a focus group or nominal group setting. The vision statement, once created, must be "socialized" with ever larger groups of people, modifying it along the way, until the entire organization and its stakeholders have adopted it.
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