True leadership requires vision. But for the vast majority of leaders, the concept of a leadership vision is unclear or completely misunderstood.
Vision is a hard topic for business leaders to understand and I’m no exception. For the longest time, I thought a vision was simply a view of how you saw your company in the future. Where you wanted it to be. How you wanted others to perceive it. The vision was focused purely on the company.
While important, this definition is incorrect. And leaders not understanding this can have a massive negative impact on their business.
What is a Vision?
A vision has absolutely nothing to do with you and your company. Period.
That’s a rule that I couldn’t grasp for a long time. After all, if a vision for your company isn’t about your company, why have it? But the more you investigate why visions exist, the more you understand why they are essential in business (and in one’s personal life, but that’s a different topic altogether).
A vision is something no one else can see. It’s intangible. It’s something to believe in. It’s a cause.
And most importantly, it’s outwardly facing.
Your business should exist to help bring that vision to a reality, but the vision itself is not about you or your company. It’s about others.
For example, a statement such as “We want to be the premiere company in our industry” is not a vision. Instead, it’s a goal that you want your organization to achieve. Having a vision is about more than just what you want to have happen to yourself. It’s about changing something in the world.
A better vision statement would be St. Jude’s: “To accelerate progress against catastrophic disease at a global level“. Note how the emphasis is on the good they do for the world, not what they get in return nor how they do it. Instead, it tells you why they exist.
A vision is something that gets people excited and gives them a reason to sacrifice something to achieve it. Not every organization is curing disease, but every business should be trying to make some positive impact in the world, and leaders need to find what that vision truly is.
Vision vs. Mission vs. Strategy
Visions, missions, and strategies often get confused, and with so many thought leaders out there describing them, it’s no surprise that it gets confusing. But a good way to think about them is:
- A vision is the change you want to see in the world. It is reason why your company exists.
- A mission is what your company will do to achieve that change.
- A strategy is how your company will achieve your mission. Companies can have multiple strategies to help accomplish their mission, but they are all focused on how they will accomplish their mission.
For St. Jude, their mission is: “The mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures, and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. Consistent with the vision of our founder Danny Thomas, no child is denied treatment based on race, religion or a family’s ability to pay.” It describes what they are going to help make the bigger vision happen.
St. Jude would then have multiple strategies to accomplish how they will complete this mission.
Many companies have brought both of these concepts into the same statement, a combined vision and mission statement. There is nothing inherently wrong with doing this, so long as there is a defined definition of the change in the world you want to see that is separated in some way from your company’s role in what you will do to accomplish that. Some companies and consultants also flip the definition of vision and mission. Again, as long as both are present in some way, the semantics really don’t matter. What’s important is that they are both defined.
Why Leadership and Vision are Important
Without a vision, you’re just managing, not leading. Leading with a vision means giving people something to strive toward that is bigger than themselves and bigger than your company.
In fact, that’s what separates a leader from a manager. Managers get shit done. They set up structures and discipline to ensure work gets done. It’s task and process oriented. The mentality of a manager is to execute the strategy.
Leadership is inspiring others to achieve a vision. The mentality of a leader is to define why we do things.
Leading with a vision means helping people see the bigger picture and how they fit into it.
At our core, this is what humans want – to be part of something bigger than ourselves and make a difference in some way. Giving your employees this sense of belonging and worth will help them not only be more motivated, but also creative and innovative.
Your vision for the company doesn’t provide a roadmap for how to get there. And that’s a good thing!
By not limiting how you get there, a vision empowers others in your organization to think more creatively about how to achieve that vision. It gives them more ownership of the how. It provides them a north star to pursue, but they can then decide the means to get there, increasing innovative thinking within your organization.
It means every person in your organization can lend their innovation and creativity to a problem instead of just a small suite of executives.
When Leadership and Vision Align
Strong leaders with strong visions create cultures of innovation, belonging, and motivation. They don’t demand people follow them, they inspire others to come along. And strong leaders allow others in the organization to determine how to get where the vision is guiding them.
But many organizations lack true leadership and vision. As a result, they focus on many of the wrong things. The results are usually cultures of blame, “management hell”, constant stress, and a sense of being in a rudderless boat. If this is how you are feeling, perhaps it’s time to consider your own leadership and vision.
And if you need help with that, I’m here to lend a hand.