Before You Write Another Vision Statement
I always assumed having a vision was an obvious necessity for business.
Lately, I wonder whether the need for a strong vision sometimes tells us that something in the work design is off.
At least one thing a vision does is bring someone’s interpretation of external reality to people who may have far less opportunity to experience that reality themselves. Or they may have little opportunity to compare what they are seeing with people who touch very different parts.
A vision created by a small group and disseminated through the company is, in that sense, processed thought.
Forgive the gross analogy, but it’s a little like eating a meal someone else chewed first, rather than getting to experience all the raw textures and flavors yourself.
When companies start working on vision statements, it might be worth asking a different question: do we need to redesign work so that people have more opportunities to touch external reality, then regularly compare what they are seeing with people in very different functions?
I was actually on a team like this years ago.
The company itself had a vision, and it changed every year. We always read it. We kind of got it. Then we went back to work and mostly forgot about it.
Our team had no vision of its own. We never made one. It simply didn’t feel necessary.
What we did have was regular contact with the outside world. Everyone on the team, including sales and even HR, had to touch external reality several times a week. Then we talked about what we had seen.
Everyone noticed something different. No one had the whole picture. But together, we could see more of the picture than any of us could see alone.
And our work evolved very quickly. There was a lot of trial and error. Ideas came from literally anyone, as did problems we needed to resolve. I might have been the “expert” trainer, but someone from sales or HR regularly noticed something about the customer that I had missed. Their lack of training expertise didn’t make that perception less important.
I don’t think we lacked direction. Direction was simply less codified.
Maybe a blurry direction, continually revised by people touching external reality, can sometimes be more useful than a beautifully articulated vision created by a few people and communicated to everyone else.
So when an organization starts feeling the need for a clearer vision, I think it is worth looking under the hood first.
Do you need to redesign the work so people regularly touch customers, stakeholders and the wider external system, then compare what they are seeing across different roles?
I’m curious whether anyone has worked on an amazing team that never had a codified vision of its own. Did you miss having one? And if you didn’t, where did your sense of direction come from?
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