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Vision: Reality in the Future

“Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is simply passing the time. Action with vision is making a positive difference.”

~ JOEL BARKER

A vision is a clear picture of how things will look at some point in the future; it should paint the picture of where you are going and how things will look when you arrive. A vision gives a sense of direction to everyone on the team or in the firm. A clear vision helps a firm resolve to stay the course over the long term rather than meandering in different directions in short bursts of activity with little results.

In this chapter, I’ll provide some of the benefits of vision and how it can help propel you and your team forward together. You’ll read a few examples of well-crafted visions and some of the stories behind how they were developed. You’ll learn how to craft a vision, even if you are not visionary. Finally, you’ll learn the importance of frequently communicating that vision.

Rick Anderson, CEO of the megaregional firm Moss Adams LLP in Seattle, WA, says

All our partners have a common vision and mission, so we are working together, and there is little waste of energy. In the business world, the competitiveness of our profession simply doesn’t allow for inefficiencies. So, everything you do needs to have synergistic opportunities. We have to make sure that our business objectives and our business offerings are absolutely consistent with what our clients want and need. We can’t sell our favorite product or service if that’s not what the marketplace wants.

For a vision to be compelling, it must tightly tie your passions to your clients’ passions. A vision answers the questions, “Who is important to us?” and “What is important to them?” Even more fundamentally, vision should be the answer to this simple question: “Where are you going?”

Ken Baggett, co-managing partner of the national firm CohnReznick LLP, shares

Our vision was best communicated with the words 10 cubed, or 10³. That meant over the next 10 years, we needed to have 10 locations around the country and be the 10th largest firm in the U.S. In a full partner meeting, right after I became MP, we announced this; we were doing $55 million in 4 offices on the eastern seaboard. We are going to have to have at least 100 partners to be able to get there. Today, we are in 10 locations with revenue of $200 million and very much focused on achieving 10 cubed.

Vision: What It Is and Why You Need One

A business vision is critical to providing a clear direction for your firm. Thus, you’ll create a vision describing your firm as you’d like to see it, say, three, four, five, or more years from now. Note the emphasis on the future; the vision statement isn’t true today. Instead, it describes the organization as you and your planning team would like it to become in the future.

Scott Dietzen, managing partner, Northwest Region, of the national accounting firm CliftonLarsonAllen LLP in Spokane, WA, believes

The key difference in leadership and management is vision. Vision and the resolve to push the organization forward towards that vision is required for leadership. As a manager, I’m taking somebody else’s vision, and I’m required to implement it. But in the leadership position, I have to understand it; I have to embrace it and own it in a way that makes it so clear to everyone why we are doing it, why it’s important.

Vision is one of the most misunderstood business concepts because many confuse it with mission. Here’s the difference:

Vision.	Articulates what you want for your business—what it will look like in the future. A vision is idealistic: how big the company will grow and how it will be perceived by the outside world. A vision does not exist today, only in the future.
Mission.	Clarifies your purpose—the value you’ll offer, the products or services you’ll provide, and the ways in which you want your clients’ lives to change. A mission exists today and tomorrow.

Visions are as varied as the companies that create them. Some focus on competition, others center on product and service, and others highlight their community contributions. Some visions articulate an ambitious goal, but others specify market share. Here are some examples of effective vision statements:

▴ “Before this decade is out … [land] a man on the moon and [return] him safely to the Earth.”—President John F. Kennedy, 1961

▴ “To become #1 or #2 in every market that we serve and revolutionize this company to have the speed and agility of a small enterprise.”—General Electric Co.

▴ “10-10-10. We will be the 10th largest accounting firm in the United States in 10 years with 10 offices.”—Ken Baggett

▴ “By 2014, in our three organizations (our accounting firm, our wealth management company, and our technology company) we want to have combined revenue of $100 million; we’re about $45 million today. We are a very seasonal firm, and by 2014, we want to be profitable every month.”—Scott Dietzen

▴ “In five years, we will be twice as big as we are today. We will have Capin Crouse University, where we will have an educational arm that educates our clients, board governors, CFOs, or bookkeepers. We will have some consulting products like succession planning for colleges and universities.”—Bill Haller

▴ “Our vision is to be recognized as the premier CPA services firm in the region providing exceptional accounting, tax, technology, and special services for businesses, successful individuals, nonprofit organizations, and public sector agencies.”—Ray Strothman

Henry Ford had a vision of a United States reshaped by affordable automobiles. Successful ventures, from Walt Disney’s theme parks and movies to Mark Zukerberg’s Facebook to Bill Gates’s Microsoft to Oprah Winfrey’s inspirational empire, have all been made possible by the combination of vision and strategy and insight and execution.

Mike Cain, founder and comanaging partner of the top-50 firm Lattimore Black Morgan & Cain, PC (LBMC), in Nashville, TN, believes, “You’ve got to be able to get out of your comfort zone and be willing to take some risk and predict the future, knowing that you may be very well be totally wrong.”

Social and religious leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., had the same combination: an inspiring vision of what society could be and strategies to make their visions reality. Most accounting firms aren’t planning to reshape our society, but vision and strategy are required to make your enterprise succeed, as well.

Making the Vision Real for Your Staff Members

The accounting firm you lead will proceed toward one of two places: the destination of your choosing or one you didn’t intend. The catalyst for determining the right direction is vision. Yogi Berra said it best, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” Rather than just a dream or far-reaching, unattainable goal, vision is a realistic picture of what you want your organization to become and the impact that change will produce. It’s also a reflection of your values, why your business exists, and what your business will become in the future.

Keith Farlinger, CEO of the national firm BDO Canada LLP in Toronto, Canada, says

When you are helping your firm move towards a common vision, it is a very exciting part as leader of the entire firm. And I think that the youngest leader will get the same buzz by setting a vision for his or her project and helping his team succeed. For people to move towards that vision, you have to keep communicating with them until it sinks in. You need to be relentless, so, you know, part of that is mundane, and it’s the same message over and over again, but it’s very, very important to do that to keep people aligned. There is lots of hard slogging every day.

BDO Canada LLP and Grant Thornton of Canada began talks a few years ago to combine forces in that country. They developed a vision that together, they could compete for larger engagements against the Big Four accounting firms. Although that merger did not proceed, it did serve as a catalyst for Farlinger and his team to adopt that same vision on their own. Farlinger goes on

A few years ago, we were in merger discussions with Grant Thornton. We would strengthen ourselves in cities and in specialty services that we are not in. We would have a critical mass of people. The merger didn’t go ahead. So, after the merger discussions ended, our leading partners developed a vision, which was enunciated in the new strategic plan: we want to get to a similar place in five years on our own.

BDO Canada LLP has taken that vision and turned it into a working plan, Keith says. “We appointed four people to take what our partners had discussed over the last few months and put our vision and values into words. One of the big parts of that vision is growth. And all the [merger-derived] strategies to become one firm—our governance, our business development culture, our employer of choice—those are all in the [new] strategic plan.”

Growing the business is part of everyone’s job at BDO Canada LLP, Keith says. “We expect that all our people are involved in business development. Each person can help us decide where your entry point is and what you do on it. But we expect that everyone will play a role on the BDO team.” As the firm makes its vision more concrete, it will also begin working to ensure that the entire firm contributes to fulfilling the vision, he says.

In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You, John Maxwell writes, “The truth is that almost anyone can steer the ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course. Leaders see the whole trip in their minds before they leave the dock. They have a vision for their destination.”

You must connect and align the individual visions of your owners and employees with the vision of your firm. Without this connection, your firm’s vision will be simply a pipe dream. Understanding the needs of all your owners, partners, employees, clients, and families will help you design a vision for a future that responds to these needs.

Most employees probably don’t think much about it, but if a vision is to be attained, everyone in the organization must share it. Leaders can talk about mission statements, but unless they convince subordinates to share the vision and equip them with the purpose to achieve it, the effort will not be enough. The captain can’t get the ship to port alone; he or she needs a crew motivated by purpose and the ultimate goal of reaching the destination. Every single detail of how to get there might not be available, but the captain puts goals in place for the crew and knows above all else that they will reach their destination together.

John Wright, managing partner of the top-100 firm Padgett Stratemann & Co. of San Antonio, TX, says, “You know, as managing partner, you’re ultimately leading leaders, so that they can lead their teams. There are some different dynamics in that. You give them a fair amount of responsibility, but you’re still charged with leading the vision and getting them to understand the vision and communicating that and then holding them accountable.”

A vision should satisfy not only the corporate needs but be in alignment with the needs of the owners, employees, and clients in varying degrees. People need to feel that they make a difference in the lives of others. Sharing new ideas and coaching or mentoring other professionals is an excellent part of developing this vision.

Our Vision Shapes Our Future

Many people gain a sense of who they are from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around them. They allow circumstance, conditioning, and other factors to mold and form who they are and what they achieve. The most effective people, however, shape their own futures. Instead of letting other people or circumstances determine their destinies, they mentally plan and then physically create their own positive results. What they have in their minds shapes their futures. The most effective leaders will follow this example for the lives of their accounting firms, as well.

The First Vision

Every accomplished vision begins as a mental vision: a thought, plan, perception, or motive. Although the physical vision does not exist, in reality, today, it develops in a person’s or team’s collective mind.

One of the most important steps in developing a vision is this first mental thought, idea, or dream of the strategic plan, design, and layout for who we want to be and what we want to do as individuals and organizations. I like to call a vision reality in the future.

Bob Bunting, former CEO of the megaregional firm Moss Adams LLP in Seattle, WA, says, “Managing partners must have a vision and a plan for their company. If a new leader doesn’t have some kind of road map, then problems become overwhelming. But if he has a road map, then these problems kind of fall in order.”

Consider some of the following examples:

▴ If you have a clear picture of what you want to accomplish in an upcoming meeting, you can establish the agenda for the meeting, enabling the attendees to focus on and meet the intended goals and objectives.

▴ If you want to have a loyal team and best place to work, you can create a vision of what that looks like to you and your partners then set about creating the picture that is in your mind.

▴ In the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, Clark Griswold had a vision of taking the family to Wally World. He then set about the tasks of servicing the family car and moving out of Chicago toward his destination. His vision was Wally World. His mission was to bring his family together and have a good time. I love Clark because he didn’t let anything deter him from attaining his vision; when he got to Wally World, it was closed and he opened it up. Clark combined vision with action—my kind of guy.

The Value of a Vision

There are many benefits of crafting a vision for your firm. A vision does the following:

▴ Encourages you to think deeply about your business

▴ Expands your perspective

▴ Clarifies what is really important to you

▴ Provides direction

It’s one thing to have the vision; a lot of people have the vision, but they never go for it because they think that the challenges are too great. A brilliant accountant can always come up with dozens of potential problems with any new move. A strong leader needs to go beyond this. I look at challenges more as opportunities. Vision clarifies what your services look like, how clients might respond to you, and the financial aspects for your clients and yourselves.

First, you must understand the present state before launching off on your tasks at hand. Before making commitments on behalf of your team, you must have a thorough understanding of the present situation.

Next, a good combination of optimism and clear facts are necessary to move forward toward a vision. When I first launched my business in 1991, I experienced a series of disappointments, but I knew that there was a strong market for what I was pursuing, and I had extraordinary optimism that I could not fail.

Some people are born with great vision; others have to work hard to develop it. For example, in our Leadership and Rainmaker Academies, each participant prepares a plan at the end of each class. This plan must be executed before the very next class. Preparing a four-month plan then executing that plan builds planning muscle. In appendix E, “RAINMAKER ACADEMY Revenue Action Plan/Results Report,” you will find an Excel version of this plan. Planning muscle builds vision. When a person has successfully executed five four-month plans, then he or she is ready to prepare a one-year plan.

Steve Mayer, founder, chairman, and CEO of the regional firm Burr, Pilger & Mayer LLP in San Francisco, CA, shares his vision of “ringing the Bay.”

[“Ringing the Bay”] meant that we wanted offices located all around the San Francisco Bay. Our first office was San Francisco, second was Palo Alto, third was Walnut Creek, fourth was San Jose, and then Santa Rosa. Those offices ringed the Bay and it was a very deliberate strategy of not having little satellite offices; they’re all full-service offices. And the idea was to have an office that was close geographically to where people live, so they didn’t have long commutes, because I firmly believe that people ought to live and work in a community, and their kids will go to school with our clients’ kids, and they would be on the soccer field together or the PTA or whatever organization. The only way to do that in the San Francisco Bay area was to locate in each of those different areas. And so, we found similar CPA firms with similar cultural values in each of those locations, and then, I approached them about mergers. So, that was the “ringing the Bay” strategy.

Building Your Vision

Having been personally responsible for a company’s vision for many years, I believe that it covers more than what most people think. I believe that a vision must consider every aspect of the business. This includes everything from high-level, broad elements, such as the organization chart, right down to details such as service and delivery. Management expert Peter Drucker said that business has three main functions: marketing, innovation, and production. It seems to me that Drucker is missing vision.

Once you have a vision, you can bounce all major business decisions against it. For leaders who want strong forward movement, vision statements will be more specific. This helps ensure consistency across departmental goals and helps eliminate other major factors that can split a business into fractional pieces, such as two departments going after different objectives and effectively dividing your resources across these objectives or even markets.

As I help CEOs begin the vision-building process, I ask the following questions all along the way:

▴ Does your vision describe a future that is more attractive than the present?

▴ Will your vision challenge your owners and employees?

▴ Will it motivate talent to join your firm?

▴ Can it serve as the basis to formulate strategy that can be acted on?

▴ Will it serve as a framework to keep decision making in context?

There are usually five major business areas in firms (accounting and tax operations, finance, marketing, IT, and HR), with two parts to each (the strategic and tactical levels). The vision is everything needed to make the firm work across all these functions. Remember that you will produce a series of these snapshots over time for planning and growth purposes because the firm must evolve slowly, not make big leaps. I would recommend business snapshots for today, one year out, two years out, three years out, and even five years out. The further out your vision, the less detail you will need to have because many things will change over time.

Of course, the key financial performance indicators should include each month or quarter in great detail for the first year. With each additional year, the vision will contain less detail, and the current probability of being right diminishes greatly.

Get a Mental Start

Our consulting group helps our clients develop or revise visions for their firms. We usually do this by organizing a team that defines a vision for the organization. This work involves gaining an understanding of the firm; validating the business’s core values; clarifying expectations of leadership, employees, and clients; and evaluating those expectations in light of the company’s market position. I believe in creating a vision in your mind before committing it to paper. Of course, you may jot down thoughts, ideas, and words to begin organizing your vision, but don’t be in too big a rush to commit final words on paper.

If your organization lacks a vision, it’s not too late to create one. Here are four steps toward articulating a successful vision:

▴ Think big. Creating a business vision allows you to think big about your firm. Let go of your objections and insecurities, and listen to your employees’ ideas. Think optimistically and enthusiastically about the dream for your future state.

▴ Clarify your firm’s core purpose or mission. Why are you in business? Dig deep to reach the value that your firm provides to clients and others. How are your clients better off after doing business with you? What specific problems, challenges, or pains do you resolve for them?

▴ Identify your business’s core values. Core values are the four or five principles that guide your operations. Examples include results, integrity, lifelong learning, responsibility, and client service.

▴ Collaborate with your leadership and management team. Draft a few possible visions and get feedback on them. Brainstorm a few vision statements with key employees and other invested parties. Narrow down your choice, and you’ve got a vision.

Developing a Vision Statement

When you are committed to the visioning process, and you have worked on the mental creation, it is time to begin crafting the right words to convey your message. Shoot for one or two paragraphs for the finished product, but length is less important than content. It’s what the vision statement says that counts and the positive effect that it has on people’s enthusiasm and performance.

Ted Mason, president and CEO of the top-100 firm Laporte Sehrt Romig Hand in New Orleans, LA, says, “We had a goal, we had a target, and we started working a plan. We worked on our culture. We have seen the benefits of what is done in terms of creating enterprise value. It has provided a ton of opportunities for our younger people to advance and get to places to which they wanted to grow.”

Things to Keep in Mind as You Begin

The vision statement includes a vivid picture of the accounting firm as it effectively carries out its operations. The process for developing a vision statement should be culture specific. The approaches for creating a successful vision vary: participants may use methods ranging from highly analytical and rational to highly creative and divergent, such as focused discussions, divergent experiences around daydreams, or sharing stories. Visit with the participants to learn how they might like to arrive at the description of their organizational vision. The statement should be a compelling description of the state and function of the organization once it implements the strategic plan.

Bake In the Buy-In

The vision statement could be something inspiring on a grand scale, or it might be something as simple as a quarterly goal. Regardless of its scale, as a leader, you must have a vision and inspire those around you to achieve it. Here are five tips:

▴ Communicate with clarity. Specifics are not necessary, but clearly communicating your vision to others is crucial. Communicate your intentions through group meetings, one-on-one meetings, telecasts, newsletters, and other modes of communication, so that everyone within your firm knows what course is being charted. Create a destination that is challenging yet realistic and a time line for achieving it.

Chris Allegretti, CEO of the regional firm Hill, Barth & King, LLC (HBK) in Boardman, OH, shares, “I really operate in three different ways: I either try to build consensus around an issue; I try and sell the idea because I think it needs to be sold; or frankly, there’re times where you just tell people, ‘I appreciate the input, but this is what I need you to do.’”

▴ Involve everyone. Resist the urge to design a grand vision without aligning all your owners’ and employees’ needs with the overall vision. Although you may have a good understanding of your vision, allow others within your organization to give feedback, help shape the process, and fully develop it. Ask of everyone, “Is this a vision that is good for you, or is this vision only good for others in our firm?” Make your vision their vision, and get real with your listening skills.

▴ Create meaning beyond more money. Many accounting firm partners are well paid in relation to their community peers, and it is often very difficult to motive them to work differently for a few more bucks. Andy Stanley writes in his book Visioneering: God’s Blueprint for Developing and Maintaining Personal Vision, “Vision gives significance to the otherwise meaningless details of our lives.” Stanley goes on to explain how the job of filling bags with dirt is an exercise in mundaneness, but when you are filling bags with dirt to save your home from a flood, it has exceptional purpose. Including the higher purpose in your vision will make more people give their hearts, along with their heads, to the service of the vision.

▴ Personalize your vision. Too many corporate visions have been created by executive teams on retreat, only to die upon the team’s return to the real world where no one else wants to adopt the well-meaning vision. Incorporate personal goals for each person within your firm that contribute to the cause and are in line with your overall vision. Not only will this make each person feel like he or she contributed to capturing the vision, but it will also increase commitment and progress.

▴ Keeping the vision alive. There will always be unforeseen events that cause distractions and setbacks. To maintain forward momentum, regularly remind team members and yourself of the vision. Encourage your staff members to regularly ask themselves whether what they are doing is moving toward or away from their destination. Reward and recognize positive steps taken in the direction of the vision. Tony Argiz, founder, CEO, and managing partner of the megaregional firm Morrison, Brown, Argiz & Farra, LLP, in Miami, FL, says, “You must live that vision on a day-today basis in everything that you do, so people can see that leadership.”

One thing that I have discovered is that some accounting firms have vision in their DNA. Many leaders recognize that the best talent is attracted to firms with a compelling vision. The staff members work there for reasons far more important than just earning a paycheck. I consider profit as the equivalent of the food that we eat and the air that we breathe; they are not the reason we’re alive, but without them, there is no life. Like Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Frederick Herzberg’s research showed long ago that a lack of money can cause dissatisfaction, but once an acceptable level is reached, people are only motivated by things like challenge, autonomy, and opportunities to be creative—just the things that a shared vision provides!

Communicating Your Vision

Developing a vision takes time and effort. Don’t waste that investment by keeping your vision a secret. Tell the world, and get people excited about it! GE’s Jack Welch, one of the business world’s greatest visionaries, had a vision to make his company “the world’s most competitive enterprise.” For Welch, true leadership comes from a clear vision and the ability to spark others to perform extraordinarily.

In the case of one of our clients, the CEO and his leadership team communicated the new vision to launch the company’s strategic planning process. A manager said, “Now that our vision is clear, our strategic plan will be focused and make sense.” By communicating your vision, you ignite people’s passion for their work. When people feel invested in a larger purpose, their individual roles become more meaningful.

One of a CEO’s most important roles is to communicate the vision to management and the employees and, yet, be open enough to the possibly superior experience of others in a specific area to modify it as they learn more. We can debate how much of this vision that investors and customers need to know because this will vary greatly from time to time and by industry and competitive environment, but the employees need to understand how the vision affects their jobs. At a minimum, they need to know at least enough to make day-today decisions that are consistent with that vision.

Don’t Limit Your Vision

A vision is the design of everything needed for the business to work, combined with the experience to know that it can work that way in the real world. So, a vision is a very complex model that you can run in your head, taking into account all the major business disciplines and thousands of real-world practical factors that are only learned through long experience. I think this is a pretty good working and practical definition of a vision, and there is no doubt that having one can greatly increase your chances of success.

HBK partner Barry Holes says

I believe Chris Allegretti has been a very talented leader of our firm for almost seven years. He did not have a predecessor to learn from since this was a new position for our firm. His first step after being elected CEO was to ask the Executive Committee if he could hire a coach who could help him learn the ropes, understand issues that arise, and provide feedback and insights that were relevant in our industry.

Chris scheduled meetings with his coach, Bob Bunting, and always showed up with an agenda of topics. He discussed many situations with his coach and tried to absorb the experiences and knowledge from Bob’s many years of leading Moss Adams LLP, a large, innovative, regional accounting firm in the northwestern United States.

After utilizing the coach for the first couple years, Chris then continued to broaden his horizons by interacting with many other CEOs of large accounting firms by participating in various groups and round tables.

Barry continues, “A very important trait for a successful leader is understanding that you don’t have all the answers. Chris is very adept at taking pieces of knowledge and using it to enhance HBK.”

Chris learned to build a cohesive vision for his partner group by interacting with many other leaders. He did not limit his vision to his own or that of his partners. Allegretti challenged himself to find a bigger vision by opening himself up to other great leaders. Holes concludes, “Over the last few years, a testament to Chris’s leadership skills is how now he gets calls from other CEOs to discuss issues with him.”

The work that I do with CEOs and executive groups has made me realize that it is difficult for them to stretch their thinking toward the future because they’re very grounded, realistic people. They are drawn toward missions, which describe what an organization does now, rather than visions, which describe why an organization engages in these activities. Visions must describe the desired long-term future of the organization—a future that typically is not quite achievable but not so fantastic to seem like a ridiculous pipe dream.

The vision-development process is a balancing act. It requires imagination, a mental capacity for synthesis, and a trust in intuition. Visions need to challenge people and evoke a feeling that draws people toward wanting to be a part of something quite special. When a vision is framed as something quite achievable within a set amount of years, then it falls into the terrain of a strategic plan.

Personally, I get motivated by challenging visions that reach out to the future and serve as a beacon for firmwide direction. Strategic plans don’t turn me on; they don’t turn most people on, but they are necessary. By the way, we are now also quite clear that strategic plans have a much higher probability of failure if there is no overarching vision informing them.

Phil Holthouse, founder and managing partner of the top-100 multioffice firm Holthouse, Carlin & Van Trigt LLP in Los Angeles, CA, says

We don’t set goals and say we’d like to be a $200 million firm in the next 10 years or something like that. But we feel like the growth is critical in terms of attracting and retaining motivated professionals. On the technical side of our work, as much as people will talk about gray areas and interpretation, I think the rules are clear, and the problems tend to be more discrete. In leadership roles, the general principles that you work on are much broader, and the rules are not as helpful.

Common Stumbling Blocks

I mentioned the need for alignment and synergy, imagination, and a trust in one’s intuition. When an executive needs to be in control, fears mistakes, is uncomfortable with ambiguity, and tends to judge rather than facilitate the creation of ideas, then the result will probably be a vision constrained by a short time horizon.

Typically, accounting firms produce visions that are not far-reaching enough, not big enough. Often, a vision is so generic that people cannot latch onto it; they can’t feel it in their hearts and guts. Even when there’s a good vision, it’s guaranteed to fail miserably if senior partners don’t walk the talk.

What is the source of these problems? Some key prerequisites often don’t exist as leaders begin the process. Without them present, any vision that gets built will have severe limitations and no impact on the bottom line.

First, the group involved in this process has to acknowledge that emotion is involved. Vision depends on the ability to feel. It requires passion, a deep visceral commitment that signals to others what they stand for. I’ll admit, this can be scary as hell because when it comes down to it, figuring out what you stand for requires that you clarify who you are. Although vision building isn’t group therapy or as touchy-feely as this may sound, it does require that each individual involved in the process look inside and talk about what is really important to him or her.

Carl George, former CEO of the national firm Clifton Gunderson LLP in Peoria, IL, shares

I think many leaders make the mistake—they think they’re leaders; they’re just managers, and they don’t touch the people; they don’t touch their feelings. A leader is caring and inspires his followers to dream. Today, the leader of even a $5 million firm needs to have a lot of vision and a lot of attributes to take their people to the next level or their clients to the next level. Otherwise, they are merger candidates because they don’t have the leadership to go to the next level. If you don’t get to the next level, you lose your best players.

Second, the group must accept that the process is, by nature, imprecise, frustrating, and tedious. Done well, it’s a creative and often chaotic process that, at the start, seems to defy linear thinking. It requires synthesis and imagination, and it often involves confusion. Put all these emotions and cognitive processes together and one realizes quickly that this is not the kind of stuff that many executives have much fun with. In fact, many just run away from a process like this when they realize that it isn’t all rational, linear decision making.

A third stumbling block is reserved for entrepreneurs. Yes, many, if not most, entrepreneurs can be quite visionary by nature, and that’s what makes them so successful. But we see some baggage that can come along with the entrepreneurial CEO that can be a stumbling block to a successful, vision-driven organization.

Entrepreneurs have a tendency to create structures and work environments that they can personally dominate. Often, decision making is too top-down and contradicts what we found in the firms that did guide their growth through vision. And entrepreneurs often delegate impulsively. Certainly, not all entrepreneurs bring these traits into their firms, but they should be on guard that these organizational manifestations don’t happen. If they do, the vision will backfire.

Ten years ago Larry Autrey, managing partner of the top-100 firm Whitley Penn LLP in Ft. Worth, TX, argued that accounting firms didn’t need a vision; they just needed to show up and do good work to grow their business. Today, he understands the point of focusing on the future of his business.

What I think we have learned is that 10 years ago, each partner had a similar expectation. I expected each partner to generate the same amount of new business each year, do the same amount of work, and manage the same number of people. What I have learned is that with our group of partners, if somebody is really good at generating business, they probably ought to generate more business than the guy who is not. If somebody is really good at the technical, they ought to do more of that.

For many, many years I would say, “We are an accounting firm; how much vision do you need you know?” We show up; we serve clients; and if we do it really well, we grow. We have to grow in order to have good people, and good people will help us grow.

What I realized over the years is that some people need a little more detail of the vision than that, and so, we end up spending more time now than I would personally prefer talking about the vision of the firm.

Unfortunately, it is impractical to expect every partner and service-line leader to understand the entire vision. As a matter of fact, it is virtually impossible because it is likely that they do not understand the other service lines, either. However, a good CEO makes sure that each service-line leader has a complete understanding of his or her responsibility for a portion of the vision and how it is phased in properly over time with the other departments.

Each day, a CEO will use the vision to measure progress and decisions about the future. Each day, the COO, CMO, and all service-line leaders should be making decisions consistent with their portion of the vision. If you have someone measuring his or her results and decisions against a vision at a former firm or in a former role or just a favorite way of doing things, then you have a personnel problem that should be confronted.

Strategies for Success

Getting people to hold the same vision requires some straightforward strategies. First and foremost is communication. Vision statements are not nearly as important as the way leaders talk to people about the visions in their own way using their own language.

We’ve found that stories are profoundly powerful: stories of the firm’s history as it illustrates part of the vision, stories of organizational heroes who exemplify values embedded in the vision, and vivid stories about what the future can look like. I believe in preaching to the converted—preachers do it all the time! Strengthening the commitment, intellectual performance, and morale of those already on your side is essential.

Benchmarks along the way are vital. If your firm is going to move toward the vision, you must set benchmarks along the way to indicate progress. People who are challenged and motivated by the vision stay and thrive; those who cannot buy into it ultimately leave.

Noel Tichy and Ram Charan, both well-known academics, consultants, and authors, have studied a number of huge organizations that continue to lumber along the growth path despite their size. They assert that, “[t]he greatest source of risk in a business is failure to understand the needs of the client or end user. If people don’t look from the outside in, external change will overtake them, no matter how much energy they lavish on their business …. Reach into your customers’ thoughts, see their needs and work backward. The rest is execution.”

Conclusion

Strategy must begin with a vision; otherwise, you and your team will meander through business being blown about by the winds of outside forces. A vision gives you purpose and gives your team something to rally around. As you pull together in harmony toward a common vision, the synergy that will occur will propel you forward more rapidly and surely than most any other business principle. Once you have clearly in mind where you want to go, then you can begin to craft your purpose (mission), your values, and the milestones (objectives) along the way.