Visions Provide the Energizing Context to Reach Our Goals
“We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same
horizon.” — Konrad Adenauer, first chancellor of post war West
Germany
Like mission and vision statements and values, goal setting and
visioning labels often get confused and used interchangeably.
Generally that doesn’t matter. As long as the people on our
teams and in our organizations are clear and consistent with
their meanings and approaches, we shouldn’t get hung up on
definitions and jargon.
But many people really are confused about the conflicting and
complimentary aspects of visions and goals. Goals are management
issues. They deal with rational analysis, planning, measurement,
and discipline. Visions are leadership issues. They deal with
feelings, energy, ideas, and fantasy. These are not either/or
choices — both are needed. These are and/also paradoxes to be
balanced.
Differences Between Goals and Visions
Goals
* Rational - use our head
* Mind
* What is Wanted
* Measurable Objectives
* Detailed Strategies and Plans
* Focus
* Sets Priorities
Visions
* Emotional - engage our heart
* Spirit
* What Could Be
* Sense of Direction
* Picture of Preferred Future - Opportunistic
* Purpose
* Creates Energy
Goals follow out of the Focus and Context of our visions. They
are shorter-term steps toward our longer-term vision. Especially
in today’s fast changing world, most detailed strategies or sets
of plans aren’t relevant for more than a few months. Effective
visions define what we want us, our team, or our organization to
look like well into the future. To set goals is to be
reasonable. To vision is to be bold.
Team and Organization Visioning
“All of the leaders to whom we spoke seemed to have been masters
at selecting, synthesizing, and articulating an appropriate
vision of the future. Later we were to learn that this was a
common quality of leaders down through the ages.” — Warren
Bennis and Burt Nanus, Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge
Within two months of joining forces in 1981, Art McNeil and I
developed the first of many visions for our start-up training
and consulting company, The Achieve Group. It became a yearly
ritual for us, and later our team of Achievers to review and
revise our vision (and values) and then set that year’s
strategies, goals, plans, and budgets. Starting with Tom Peters’
Toward Excellence program in 1983, we went on to help hundreds
of management teams (some much more successfully then others) in
many countries establish their Context and Focus and then put
together implementation strategies and build the leadership
skills that brought it all to life.
At Achieve and now at The CLEMMER Group, we have learned that a
powerful organization vision will:
* Create organizational energy and enthusiasm for change and
improvement.
* Provide an overarching “big picture” direction, focus, and
passion to strategies, budgets, plans, systems, processes, and
technological change.
* Focus and build teams much more effectively than wilderness
experiences, simulations, or group exercises (most “team
building” activities are done in a vacuum and don’t last).
* Counterbalance the pain, suffering, and helplessness that
downsizing, disaster, or other such depressing activities
usually bring.
* Vaccinate people against the Victimitis Virus and Pessimism
Plague by giving them a sense of hopefulness and
self-determination.
* Set up a “magnetic force” that will attract the people and
“lucky breaks” needed to move toward the vision.
* Repel those people who don’t want to be any part of anything
so “unrealistic,” “fanciful,” “stupid,” etc.
* Boost “psychic pay” so that everyone feels like a winner who
is part of an organization that’s going somewhere exciting.
Our ability to develop an energizing Context and Focus for our
team or organization will determine whether we’ll be a true (and
effective) leader or a technician or technical expert,
supervisor, project manager, administrator, or bureaucrat. At
the heart of cultural leadership is caring for the context.
Goals need to be energized and focused by the larger context of
exciting visions. These paint us into the big picture and draw
us forward to the future of our dreams.