Vision statements: How to talk about your big dream for your business
It’s a leader’s job to see the big picture. It’s also a leader’s job to communicate the big vision.
Unfortunately, seeing a big picture and communicating a big vision aren’t always compatible.
Big-picture thinking often involves abstraction, generalisation, a zooming out.
In contrast, articulating a vision requires you to do the reverse: get concrete, specific and zoomed in.
But if you’re not careful, the abstract, bird’s-eye language of the boardroom can seep into the language you use to talk about your vision to the people doing the work.
Which is how the world ends up with vision decks full of words like joined-up service delivery, operationalising expertise, and delivering on world-class propositions.
When what you really need to give people is a concrete idea of what the world will look like once your vision becomes reality.
For example, JFK, whose vision inspired our name, Broom & Moon, didn’t talk (publicly, at least) about the planning horizons of our aeronautical ambitions.
His language was much more concrete and visual than that:
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.
One man. One moon. One Earth.
A big dream, but painted small.
Here’s another big dream, painted small: Bill Gates’s original mission for Microsoft. Notice how it’s as intimate and zoomed in as it is grand and ambitious:
A computer on every desk in every home.
What image do you have in your head right now?
So how do you go from leveraging platforms and empowering core competencies to articulating a vision people can picture?
You could start by looking at another famous vision, which like those of JFK and Bill Gates, became a reality: Henry Ford’s dream for the car. Here’s what he said:
I will build a motor car for the great multitude… It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces… When I’m through, everybody will be able to afford one, and everyone will have one. The horse will have disappeared from our highways, the automobile will be taken for granted…[and we will] give a large number of men employment at good wages.
Yes, the religiosity and assumption that only men work are of their time. But this passage inspires because it paints a vivid picture.
And it could offer a useful starting point for thinking through your own org’s vision. So try filling in the blanks and see what happens:
We will build… for…
It will be so… that no one will be unable to…
When we’re through, everyone will…
… will have disappeared and … will be taken for granted
Seeing the big picture is one thing. Painting that picture requires translation. Perhaps this tool can help?
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