What is a Vision Statement?
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream,” and what followed was a vision that changed a nation. This is a dramatic example of the power of a compelling vision.
Management author Tom Peters identified a clear vision of the desired future of the organization as an essential component of high performance.
Widely-read organizational development author Warren Bennis identified a handful of traits that made great leaders great. Among them is the ability to create a vision.
What Is a Vision and How Do I Get One
A vision is a guiding image of success formed in terms of a contribution to society. If a strategic plan is the “blueprint” for an organization’s work, then the vision is the “artist’s rendering” of the achievement of that plan. It is a description in words that conjures up a similar picture for each member of the group of the destination of the group’s work together.
There is one universal rule of planning: You will never be greater than the vision that guides you. No athlete ever got to the Olympics by mistake; a compelling vision of their performance inevitably guides all the sweat and effort for many years. The vision statement should require the organization’s members to stretch their expectations, aspirations, and performance. Without that powerful, attractive, and valuable vision; why bother?
How to Use a Vision
A mission statement answers the questions:
Why does our organization exist?
What business are we in?
What values will guide us?
A vision, however, is more encompassing. It answers the question: “What will success look like?” It is the pursuit of this image of success that really motivates people to work together.
A vision statement should be realistic and credible, well articulated, easily understood, appropriate, ambitious, and responsive to change. It should orient the group’s energies and serve as a guide to action. It should be consistent with the organization’s values. In short, a vision should challenge and inspire the group to achieve its mission.
The Impact of Vision
John F. Kennedy did not live to see the achievement of his vision for NASA, but he set it in motion when he said, “By the end of the decade, we will put a man on the moon.” When it came time to appropriate the enormous funds necessary to accomplish this vision, Congress did not hesitate. Why? Because this vision spoke powerfully to values Americans held dear: America as a pioneer and a world leader.
A man on the moon, brother and sisterhood among the races of the globe… What is your organization’s vision?
Shared Vision
To a leader, the genesis of the dream is unimportant. The great leader is the servant of the dream, the bearer of the myth, the storyteller. “It is the idea (vision) that unites people in the common effort, not the charisma of the leader,” writes Robert Greenleaf in Leadership Crisis. He goes on to write: “Optimal performance rests on the existence of a powerful shared vision that evolves through wide participation to which the key leader contributes, but which the use of authority cannot shape… The test of greatness of a dream is that it has the energy to lift people out of their moribund ways to a level of being and relating from which the future can be faced with more hope than most of us can summon today.”
Creating a Vision
Like much of strategic planning, creating a vision begins with and relies heavily on intuition and dreaming.
As part of the process, you may brainstorm with your staff or your board what you would like to accomplish in the future. Talk about and write down the values that you share in pursuing that vision. People can spur each other on to more daring and valuable visions — dreams of changing the world for which they are willing to work hard.
The vision may evolve throughout a strategic planning process. Or, it may form in one person’s head in the shower one morning! The important point is that members of an organization without a vision cannot possibly be creative in finding new and better ways to get closer to that vision. Nonprofit organizations, with many of their staff and board members actively looking for ways to achieve a vision, have a powerful competitive and strategic advantage over organizations that operate without a vision.