Vision: how leaders develop it, share it, and sustain it - includes related articles

Business Horizons, Sept-Oct, 1994 by Joseph V. Quigley

Mission: what it is today and what it aspires to be;

Goals: what it is committed to and where it is going.

The answers to these questions form the essential elements of the vision, with shared values as the foundation. The vision should be viewed as open-ended rather than closed. This definition is not intended to exclude the leader's creativity. But the fundamental vision questions must be answered in a way that stimulates the organization.

Some will argue that profit, not vision, is the primary corporate motivator. But profit alone is not enough to motivate people. Profit is perceived negatively by many in corporations. Employees often see it as something they earn that management then takes and passes on to shareholders. Although this perception may be distressing to management, it clearly indicates that twin motivators--profit and vision--are required to get the most out of a corporation's people.

Although employees may not understand profit or may even be alienated by the notion of it, almost all will buy into the concepts of customer service, superior quality, integrity, and excellence if the corporation makes a serious effort to live up to these values. A statement of vision must be provided by the firm's leaders, particularly the CEO. This is because, as Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus state in their book Leaders (1985), "A business corporation is not only an economic entity but a community, possibly the central community of our times .... What the leader hopes to do is to unite the people in the organization into a 'responsible community."'

The vision statement is not a closed proposition. It may also contain a slogan, a diagram, a picture--whatever grabs attention. The aim is to capture the essence of the more formal parts of the vision in a few words that are easily remembered yet evoke the spirit of the entire vision statement. In its 20-year-plus battle with Xerox, Canon's slogan or battle cry was: "Beat Xerox." Toyota's is just as brief, but more broadly based: "To Win." Motorola's slogan is "Total Customer Satisfaction." Outboard Marine Corporation's slogan is "To Take the World Boating." Chevron strives "To Become Better Than the Best."

Vision as the Key Leadership Attribute

Korn/Ferry International recently reported on a survey of 1,500 senior leaders, 870 of them CEOs, from 20 different countries, including representatives from Japan, the United States, Western Europe, and Latin America (Korn 1989). The leaders were asked to describe the key traits or talents desirable for a CEO today and important for a CEO in the year 2000. The dominant personal behavior trait most frequently mentioned, both for now and for the future, was that the CEO convey a "strong sense of vision." A rather amazing 98 percent saw that trait as most important for the year 2000. When the leaders were asked to cite key knowledge and skills for CEOs of the present and future, "strategy formulation" to achieve a vision was seen as the most important skill---by a margin of 25 percent over any other.