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Guiding people with a practical, compelling vision

“We choose to go the moon in this decade and do the other things – not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our abilities and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
(US President John F. Kennedy)
“Adding value has become more than just a sound business principle; it is both the common denominator and the competitive edge.”
(Arthur Levitt Jr)

Visionary thinking means developing a coherent description of your business in the future, which should make clear the connection between your thinking and the changes that are going on in your industry and your local market. This particularly applies to senior managers and business heads within your organisation. An essential element of visionary thinking is future orientation – the ability to communicate a clear view of the future of a business area: its aims and what it is achieving. Future orientation applies to managers at all levels, whereas visionary thinking is most relevant to senior and mid-level managers.

It is often the case that, as managers, we tend to focus on the immediate priorities of meeting customers’ needs, resolving problems, managing and leading others. We are very effective at managing for today but less effective at preparing for tomorrow. A defining role of a leader is their ability to set the right course and then take people with them, with the result that the business develops, competes and succeeds. Developing visionary thinking often means changing – or transforming – the organisation so that it can move in a determined way in the right direction. This toolkit explains how to ensure success.

Length: 9 pages

Contents:

The Benefits

Action Checklist: Visionary Thinking
This explains how to develop a compelling vision of the future that is powerful, communicable, desirable and realistic, focused and adaptive. The vision needs to be general enough to accommodate individual initiatives and flexible enough to allow for changing conditions.

Avoiding Problems – this section is designed to help ensure that the vision is flexible and able to cope with changing circumstances.

Dos and Don’ts

Key Questions

Things You Can Do
• Create your vision
• Test your vision
• Articulate and actively communicate your vision
• Use the vision
• Anticipate changes
• Balance future thinking with routine management tasks
• Recognize that visions and strategies can be applied at different levels
• Make distinctive, complementary choices
• Understand the impact of values and incentives
• Generate involvement and emotional commitment
• Keep the strategy consistent but flexible
• Lead by example and learn from mistakes
• Delegate and empower people
• Motivate people

Further Action

Further Information