VISION: IF YOU CAN SEE IT, YOU WILL ACHIEVE IT!

Transcription

1 VISION: IF YOU CAN SEE IT, YOU WILL ACHIEVE IT! By: Dr. Alan R. Zimmerman, CSP Years ago, Frank Gaines made a brilliant observation. He said, Those who can see the invisible can do the impossible. How true! That has been the lesson of every successful person and every great organization. The success of Coca Cola, for example, is due in large part to the vision of its leaders, past and present. Robert Woodruff, President from 1923 to 1955, boldly declared during World War II, We will see that every person in uniform gets a bottle of Coca Cola for five cents wherever he is and whatever it costs. After the war, he said that he wanted everyone in the world to have tasted Coca Cola in his lifetime. That s quite a vision! Walt Disney had a vision of Disney World and Epcot that would go far beyond the original Disneyland. Unfortunately, Walt passed away before the opening of Disney World, so his widow was asked to speak at the opening ceremonies. She was introduced by a man who said, Mrs. Disney, I just wish Walt could have seen this. She stood up and simply said, He did, and sat down. Visions are powerful! Parts of a Powerful Vision What is this force behind every success story? What is a vision? What does it look like? What are its characteristics? From an organizational point of view, a vision is a picture of what you believe the future of your organization should look like to your customers, employees, owners, and stockholders. Inherent in that definition is the implication that the future will be significantly better than the status quo. Now that sounds a bit academic, a bit sterile. Indeed, visions can leave you cold or inspire you. Just as one painting of a landscape can leave you cold, another painting of the same landscape can really touch you emotionally. A powerful vision inspires you. A powerful vision appeals to your heart, your spirit, your emotion, your intuition, whatever you call it. A powerful vision paints a picture that is so enticing, so alluring, so exciting, vivid, real and challenging that you can almost taste it, feel it, see it because it s right out there in front of you. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, I have a dream. He did not say, I have a strategic plan.

2 A powerful vision is brief, catchy, and easy to remember. You want to be thinking and talking about your vision day after day, and you want the same thing from your colleagues and employees. That won t happen with a long, drawn-out, dry and complicated vision. Your vision could be as snappy as Southwest Airlines Have fun and make a profit, or Disney s We create happiness, or Service Master s Honoring God in all we do. Or your vision could be a bit more formal, but right to the point with something like, We will become and we will remain world class in quality and customer satisfaction. Positive and Negative Visions Visions can present either positive or negative images. A positive image incorporates something you do not have but want, such as being number one in market share or having a truly balanced work and family life. A negative image incorporates something you already have but want to eliminate, such as lower morale or high job turnover. Unfortunately, negative images are much easier to formulate than positive ones, and negative images mobilize people more rapidly than positive ones. Just look at politics. People get a lot more fired up about eliminating crime than instilling personal responsibility. The problem is negative images and negative visions aren t very reliable. People think if they just get rid of what they don t want, they ll get what they do want. Nothing could be further from the truth. It s like turning on your television set. Most likely what comes on is not what you want. You can get rid of that channel and go to another, but you still may not get what you want. Getting rid of what you don t want may yield something you want even less. For example, in the 1920 s, our predecessors thought they could get rid of alcoholism by eliminating alcohol. They got rid of neither during Prohibition. They only got large-scale, organized crime. The most successful visions guide people to what they want, not away from what they don t want. The most successful visions use positive images to inspire people to desert the status quo and make sacrifices in pursuit of a long-range ideal. Initial Creation of a Positive Vision So how do you get a positive vision for your organization? You do it by answering a number of questions. You assume that nothing is impossible. You use your left and right brain, your intellect and your intuition, to look for the best of all possibilities.

3 George Morrisey (Morrisey on Planning: A Guide to Strategic Thinking) has outlined several of those questions. I ve added a few of my own. Go ahead and write down your answers to these questions. The only rule is don t take your pen off the paper. Don t stop to edit your comments or your grammar. Just let it all out. Here goes: 1. Picture: What do you want your business, products, or services to look like in the future? 2. Responsibility: If you were in charge, what would you do and what would you change? 3. Key: What is the key to the successful future of your organization? 4. Uniqueness: What unique contribution should you be making in the future? 5. Excitement: What would make you excited about being a part of this organization in the future? 6. Values: What values need to be stressed? 7. Competency: What should be your core competencies? 8. Opportunity: What is your greatest opportunity for growth? 9. Position: What should be your position with regard to customers, markets, profitability, growth, technology, quality, and employees? The answers to those questions will give you everything you need for writing your vision. Consensus Creation of a Positive Vision Typically, if you re part of an organization, you won t have the authority to craft a vision all by yourself. The thoughts of many people go into the creation of the vision, and truly successful visions are the result of consensus building. Perhaps you will have a team that is empowered to do that. If so, start by asking each team member to write down answers to the above questions before you come together. No one should discuss his answers with anyone else on the team.

4 Then come together with a skilled facilitator. Without one, you ll probably spend too much time on tangents and not have much to show for your efforts. The facilitator should begin the meeting by having all the team members share their answers to one question at a time, with answers posted for all to see. The only comments that are allowed are those for clarification, none for criticism or praise. Move on to discussion. Discuss the answers to each question.. Of course, you won t be using every answer. That would be too much to capture in a single statement. Just focus on what grabs you the most. Come to consensus on the key words or phrases that reflect your organization s future perspective on each question. Now review your answers to all the questions to reach agreement on a few key words or phrases that need to be included in your vision statement. Then write out your vision statement. Perhaps your final draft will focus on just one question, such as Position, We will sell more dollars of merchandise per square foot than any other retail competitor. Or maybe your vision will cross several questions, such as the Excitement and Values questions, We will be known as the employer of choice because our employees will be treated with respect and trained to be the best in the industry. All you have to do after that is check it out and live it out. Check with other key stakeholders to make sure they re on board. Get their feedback, and make a few revisions if necessary. Then go about the business of making sure that you and everyone else acts in accordance with the vision. Benefits Galore If you do, you ll find both the journey and the destination to be better than ever. You ll create movement in your employees. No one runs to jump on a stalled train. No one wants to get on. People want to get on a train that s going somewhere. That s what a leader with a vision offers. He/she knows where he/she is going and how to bring other people along. Second, you will instill more meaning in people s jobs. If you ask visionless employees what they do, they ll describe a few functions or processes they perform. If you ask employees in a vision-directed company what their organizations do, they ll describe the results they produce. There s a big difference between a hospital employee saying she answers the telephone and that same employee saying she helps take care of the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of their patients.

5 Finally, vision helps cure rustout and burnout, the ailments of our generation. Rustout comes when a person or organization never had a vision in the first place. Burnout comes when a person or organization loses sight of its vision. We re living in challenging times. More and more is expected by our customers and from our employees. Competition has never been more pervasive. A great vision is one tool that you need to be out in front. My program on Peak Performance: Motivating The Best In Others will give you even more tools. Give me a call now to book your program and get the results you want.