Keep Your Vision Alive

Top business leaders embark on their role with great enthusiasm and expectations. They set out to make a difference and craft a success story. Fueled by their freedom to create, leaders draft mission and vision statements to frame their organization's purpose. Their mission statements define their work or specialty, and their vision statements declare what they seek to accomplish (and why).

Vision is testimony to a leader's beliefs, and it ideally trickles down to followers. It sets the tone for all company operations.

Unfortunately, many organizations with a proclaimed vision struggle to uphold it. This vision has died somewhere along the way, starting out strong but eventually losing its power. Many leaders fail to recognize the descent. Once they do become aware, they wonder what caused it.

Fortunately, with the proper approach, visions needn't fade away. They can (and must) be kept fervently alive.

The Cost of a Dead Vision

When a leader's vision fades into the background, the organization's purpose can derail. Direction meanders, and focus blurs. The organization evolves into an entity that no longer resembles its inception, and it functions at a much lower level. Signs of failure begin to appear, and consequences grow increasingly painful.

Without a strong vision, the organizational emphasis on core values wanes, and less desirable values take their place. When vision fades, so do priorities. New practices and procedures may defy the company's original spirit.

Generally, these changes occur gradually and are barely noticed. Leaders may not recognize the cumulative effects until a crisis hits and they're forced to pick up the pieces. Subtle and steady gaps in organizational vision lead to totally unexpected conditions.

How Vision Gets Lost

At the outset, a leader's vision sets the tone for how an organization operates, as evidenced by its plans, decisions, responses and attitudes. In the early stages of vision-setting, guiding principles rule the day.

But day-to-day operations are taxing, complicated and require great energy. Complexity can kill an original vision, notes Andy Stanley in Making Vision Stick (Zondervan, 2007). Many leaders lose track of their vision over time and simply hope to keep their heads above water. Their attention is diverted from fundamentals to details. Crises often precipitate this. When vision gets lost in the shuffle, the organization veers off course.

In some cases, leaders see so many opportunities that they dilute their company's efforts by trying to pursue them all. Without proper plans and resources in place, chaos renders one's original vision unrecognizable.

Some leaders are changed by the level of success they achieve. It's very tempting to rearrange certain aspects of the operation to deliver personal benefits (if not emotional, then certainly financial).

Ultimately, it's the top leader's responsibility to plant the vision and cultivate it throughout the organization. Vision dies when a leader's support dwindles and goals are no longer emphasized.

Properly Establish Your Vision

Everyone within the organization must understand its vision. Leaders must ensure this occurs, and planning is the first priority.

Ideas are better grasped when they're simple. Complex or confusing visions cannot be easily understood. No matter how well they're communicated, they'll remain elusive to most people. This is the thrust of leadership consultant Shaun Spearmon's 2013 Forbes article quot;Your Company Vision: If It's Complicated, It Shouldn't Be.quot; A corporate vision must be constructed in a way that's easy to understand and remember.

Leaders next must communicate this vision to their people. A great idea that remains a secret is as useless as a bad idea that everyone hears. Gather people together, and explain your vision. Ensure they understand its meaning, your reasons for it and the impact it should have on their daily roles.

As Andy Stanley emphasizes, an effective vision expresses concern about a problem in the marketplace and offers a solution. Visions yield value when they solve problems or make something better. A vision implies that failure to follow it creates substantial setbacks.

Vision should emotionally engage people to convince them of its importance. It cannot be separated from the organization's planning, practices and personality. Selling a vision with this kind of impact helps ensure it will have a longer life.

Effectively Maintain Your Vision

Keeping the corporate vision active and powerful takes effort, diligence, intentionality and desire, all of which must be initiated by the top leader. A casual approach to monitoring your vision is inadequate. Start by getting your leadership circle on board.

Pointing activities and outcomes back to the vision keeps it top of mind. You benefit by establishing policies and procedures in ways that reflect your vision.

Wise leaders boost their vision even further by eliminating any activities or projects that don't support it. As tempting as new ventures may be, spreading yourself thin by chasing too many of them always weakens the focus on your primary vision and diminishes overall outcomes.

Maintaining this mindset requires your vision to be openly and continuously promoted long after its introduction. Include it on all products, marketing materials and communications. In staff meetings, periodically describe your passion for the vision. Send a video message to your employees through company email. Share how important the vision is to you and how their involvement is part of a greater cause.

Multiply Your Vision

Vision will fade if a leader is its sole supporter. Vision thrives only when everyone believes it and collectively promotes it.

Make sure your people are "all in," compelled to nobly promote the cause in lieu of focusing on self-interest. Lead by example so your behaviors, attitudes and performance are contagious.

Your vision also multiplies when you reward compliance. Publicly recognize people when their accomplishments steer the organization closer to your vision's reality.

Let people know that you expect them to make the vision their central focus. Use performance assessments to review people's support for the vision in their work.

There's no need for one's vision to stall or die out. When you keep it fresh and alive, you can steer your organization toward accomplishing every goal.

Dr. Maynard Brusman

Consulting Psychologist amp; Executive Coach
Trusted Leadership Advisor

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