Setting and selling a vision

Objective

As an effective leader you must recognise that your team or organisation needs to know what it stands for. You will understand that it needs an overarching sense of identity. This identity can be described in three elements. Your team needs to:

• be able to define itself – to know and say what it stands for;
• understand where it is going;
• know how it will measure success.

This self-definition provides a motivational framework for strategy, operational action and performance measurement. You have an unequivocal responsibility to state this vision in terms that are simple and clearly intelligible – very often such a vision can (and should) be expressed in a phrase or sentence.

The concept of a vision is no less relevant for the leader of a team within a larger organisation – here the responsibility is to translate the overall organisational vision into a vision for your smaller unit.

Once ‘set’, the vision must be ‘sold’ – repeated in all forms of communication with sufficient frequency and conviction to demonstrate that it really does underpin the organisation’s daily activities.

Your objective as leader is to ensure that vision is seen to matter. You must create a vision which is clear and motivating – and you must be seen to advocate it tirelessly.

Context

Any leader’s team must be organised to deliver performance. Organisation structure, job descriptions, annual objectives, personal development plans, annual bonus plans, specific incentives – these and more must be formulated to maximize performance, i.e. the intention being to recruit the best staff who will be suitably rewarded for meeting targets, working within a framework of clear accountability.

By providing a vision, you offer a guiding statement that:

• individual team members find motivating;
• binds all performance actions together.

In this way, vision creates something real – it becomes more than a series of words or aspirations. It is the common denominator which unites all staff in a common purpose of inter-related actions.

You must have faith in the value of vision, since the vision itself will probably not articulate specific performance measures. You must understand the sometimes intangible value of expressing generalised ambitions as a means of motivating and directing all staff.

Challenge

Too often there is a risk that too much attention is paid to creating a vision, and too little to communicating it. Moreover, even less attention may be paid to ‘selling’ it. A vision can only have an impact (i.e. underpin all performance actions) if it is seen and heard with a frequency which gives it credibility. It cannot be, for example, simply a statement prefacing annual business plans or reports, which are then filed away.

You must develop for your chosen vision a communication strategy focused on selling it – i.e. the communication approach is based on enthusiastic advocacy rather than passive publication. So your vision should be referred to regularly in:

• team or staff meetings;
• regular written updates to staff;
• team newsletters;
• the intranet and external website;
• internal and external presentations;
• press interviews (if applicable);
• 121s and informal conversations;
• any other opportunity!

The key is repetition – you must never feel inhibited from a zealous and seemingly excessive restatement of the vision. It will only be taken seriously if it is seen to be constant and ever-present – and not just another example of here-today gone-tomorrow management speak.

Success

Only time will tell whether the vision you set for an organisation is achievable or not. In the near term, you will most likely lay the foundations for success if this most personal of endeavours is thoroughly stress-tested and planned.

An absolute prerequisite is that your vision must be based on your beliefs and value-sets. It cannot be a view that you have borrowed, or be the creation of others to whom the visioning process was subcontracted.

Key steps to success are:

• ‘Vision’ is personal – the vision must be based on your instincts even if discussed and ‘sounded out’ with others. I do not believe that successful visions are crafted by committee or inevitably achieved via consensus. Even if your vision emerges from a team-based, collegiate review (perhaps in certain cases using the resources of outside consultants), the specific expression of the vision must be of your own choosing.
• The proposed vision is tested – it is worth trying out the vision on a small group of trusted colleagues to test both their reaction to the overall proposition and also to the manner in which it is being articulated. The vision is nothing if it is not clear, intelligible and repeatable.
• The proposed vision is simple – ideally a straightforward phrase or sentence, not a long series of paragraphs.
• Initial communication is planned – how the vision is communicated requires careful analysis, especially if there is a range of internal and external target groups for whom it is relevant. The larger the number of stakeholders involved, the more complex the planning – you must be sure that all stakeholders are communicated to at the right time and in the right sequence.
• Ongoing communication is planned and intensive – launching your vision is just that; it’s a start. The real test is to sustain its communication and dissemination over a long period of time, and plans must be laid to enable repetition. You must also drill yourself to take every opportunity, notably in face-to-face contacts, to reinforce key vision messages.
• Communication messages are refined – there should be no assumption that just because communication was well-planned, it is incapable of improvement. If through the act of repetition better ways of communicating the key messages arise, then these should be embraced.
• Annual and strategic plans are evaluated against the vision – the vision should be much more than a mantra being communicated on a regular basis; it must also be a litmus test against which long-term and annual plans are evaluated.

Pitfalls

Vision is weakened in four primary ways.

• The vision is too long or too complex – quite simply, it isn’t intelligible and is not easily explained and repeated.
• The vision is clearly at odds with prevailing business realities – your primary responsibility is to orientate your team clearly towards achievable goals. If the vision is distanced from these, it will lack credibility.
• The leader fails to communicate the vision regularly – infrequency of communication will suggest that the vision is a passing fad or being used to complete a management planning process.
• You think the vision isn’t relevant to you – if you convey the impression that the organisation’s overall vision isn’t relevant to your smaller team, your strategic ‘disloyalty’ risks failing to align your team to the organisation’s greater goals.

Leaders’ checklist

• Ask yourself if the organisation or team you are responsible for has a vision. Is it clear? Is it being communicated? Is it up to date?
• If the answer to any of these challenges is ‘no’, then initiate a process to develop a vision.
• If you are creating a vision, be sure that while you canvass the views of others, the nature and articulation of the vision bears your personal imprint.
• Check the extent of the vision – if it’s too long, it will lack the effectiveness of simplicity and should be cut!
• Make sure that the vision is referred to in all appropriate communication media, and that you personally oversee any communication plan.
• Train yourself to use all opportunities to reinforce key messages relating to the vision.