Filed in Vision

How many times have you seen one of those vague, slightly inspiring, but wishy-washy vision statements?  They’re often found buried in a thick report or framed on a wall, overlaying a sublime photo.  Nobody knows quite what they mean, who wrote them, what actions they imply, or why they should care.

Vision is a critically important part of any process of goal attainment or achievement. Without vision, there is little clarity, alignment, or motivation to move toward the desired outcomes. Yet most people and groups do not have a strong sense of what they want to achieve. Forming a good vision doesn’t happen overnight…it evolves with the investment of time and energy needed to make a vision powerful.

What Exactly is a Vision?

A vision is a clear, compelling image or sense of a desired future state. It is created with the intention of being transformed into a future reality. It represents a goal or achievement that motivates people to take action to get them to that future state. If it’s a good vision, it will grab people in the gut, touch them deeply, and move them to action toward the goal represented by the vision. It becomes the living, breathing force behind the actions of an organization. If it’s not a good vision, it will fall flat, fail to motivate and align people, and may even result in cynicism and lower morale in an organization.

What Makes a Vision Powerful?

With all this at stake, an important question for leaders to explore is: “How do we know whether we have a good vision?” Is it like art, where we just know it when we see it? Or is there some way we can look at our situation objectively and understand what’s working well and what’s not?

I find it interesting to look at how diamonds are evaluated. Ultimately what is important is their overall brilliance and beauty, yet it is extremely useful to identify the most important aspects that result in this brilliance and beauty. Diamonds are generally evaluated on four aspects, known as the 4 C’s: Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat Weight. Each quality has its own scale, and all diamonds are evaluated on these scales to objectively evaluate their brilliance and beauty, and therefore their value.

I propose that we can look at the power or quality of visions in a similar way. Ultimately, what is important is the motivation, alignment, and results they create for people, yet we can identify a set of aspects that create these outcomes. I have found in my work that the most useful distinctions can be distilled into 7 C’s: Clear, Concrete, Compelling, Creative, Consensus, Communicated, and Committed. Each of these aspects can be evaluated on a scale of 0 to 100% quality. 100% is defined at the point at which additional improvement efforts would not be worth their cost.

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Even though most of us understand that a powerful vision is critical to achieving what we want, we don’t usually put much attention on the quality or power of our vision.

This month’s practice is all about taking stock of the level of quality of your vision. You can do this practice on any level you choose — individual, group, or organization. You can do it with a big, long-term vision, or any of your smaller, shorter-term visions. Just make sure you explicit identify which vision you are working with in this exercise.

Take some time this month to think about your visioning with a curious and open mind. Use the 7C framework to ask yourself questions and rate your visioning in each of the 7 areas. Plot your ratings on a radar diagram.

What areas of your visioning are strong? Which are weak? What can you do to improve the ratings of the weaker areas? Would other people in your organization give the same ratings you did, or would you expect to see big differences with others? What can you learn from all of this?

You might consider taking some action to improve your visioning. If necessary, find support either inside or outside your organization to make changes. It could be one of the more impactful things you can do right now to make a difference in your organization’s success!

I just saw the new movie called The Secret. While there is a bit of hype that had me snickering a few times, its central theme really got me thinking. Called the Law of Attraction, it’s basically the idea that we can become and achieve much more if we dedicate ourselves wholeheartedly to a clear vision. We attract what we imagine. It’s Steven Covey’s second habit — begin with the end in mind — on steriods. As is often the case, the devil is in the details. The lives of phenomenal success described in the movie didn’t come about from doing a few visioning exercises or wishing for wealth and success. They came from doing a few things consistently, day after day:

1. Seeing clearly and concretely what they wanted to become or accomplish in their mind’s eye.
2. Growing their awareness of and ability to work with the subconscious thoughts and feelings that would sabotage their efforts.
3. Fostering consistent dedication and wholehearted commitment to their vision.
4. Living their vision by taking real, concrete actions toward making it their reality.

The movie tends to trivialize what it takes to create a life that becomes a work of art. It takes a great deal of maturity, skill, and perserverence — perhaps even fanaticism — to pull this off. Most of us seem to have some innate sense of what it takes — and live it out to some degree of success. But most of us also feel like we could do more with our lives.

Interestingly, this entire conversation can apply equally well on the level of a team or organization. Are there ways you, your team, or your organization could do a better job with these four activities?

A friend recently reminded me about a hilarious little web-based “game” called the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator. Of course, it wouldn’t be so funny if it weren’t for the fact that soooo many mission and vision statements out there read an awful lot like some of the stuff that this apparently mindless process generates. You know the ones — those vague, slightly inspiring, but wishy washy mission or vision statements framed on a wall, overlaying a sublime photo. At best, they are ignored. At worst, they suck the life out of a company’s visioning and planning efforts. This is the opposite of what Blue Summit stands for.