I was working with a client just recently and they asked me to have a look at the Vision that they had come up and give them some feedback.
This was the Vision that they wanted to share with their entire organisation, it’s goal was to inspire them, and provide them a clear direction that the entire organisation could follow.
I think this is great idea, as a great vision really can really ignite the passions within an organisation and get everyone onto the same page, all pulling in the same direction, which then increases our effectiveness and probability of success.
When they gave me the Vision I read through it a couple of times and they waited anxiously for my feedback.
So I said to them, ok I’d like you to do something for me. I’d like you to tell me what your Vision is, word for word, and I will compare it with whats written down.
They were bit surprised by my question, I think they thought I would just tell them that it’s great, or it could be better if you changed this or that word. But they agreed.
‘ok, well the visions is about our desire, our goal to be erm…’ they started, but I interrupted them and said, ‘no I don’t want you to explain the vision, I want you to repeat it to me verbatim, word for word, and I will tell you how many words you got right’.
‘ok, got it’, they said. ‘Well our vision is erm, about us wanting erm…’.
I laughed and said ‘if you can’t repeat your vision word for word, and you wrote it; how the hell will other people be able to remember it, communicate it, and have the same understanding of what it is?’.
Visions need to be simple, easy to remember and not open to misinterpretation.
At another client we created a vision, which was ‘ To be in the Top 50 Business in our sector‘.
This is a vision which everyone could remember, could understand, and could communicate to others within the organisation. There is no grey, no room to misinterpret what we are trying to achieve, everyone understood it and could repeat it verbatim.
This was a simple vision, and when we have a simple vision it allows people in focus on achieving it, rather than trying to understand it.
Here are a couple of examples of Visions
Which of those two visions can you remember?
Which of these this visions do you think is most inspirational?
If you can’t remember a vision, how can it be inspirational?
When we create a vision it needs to be memorable, it needs to be clear and easy to understand, and when we get that right then it makes it much easier for our teams to understand where we want to go and then focus on getting there.
Tell me about your companies visions, is it clear or is it a head scratcher, I would be really interested to know.
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