Far from being the answer to corporate performance, company visions are often a hindrance to organisational effectiveness.
Creating a vision creates expectations — which is precisely their point — and unless you are willing to live up to these expectations the vision will lead to organisational apathy, at best, and cynicism at worst.
Here are three tell-tale signs that your vision is taking you backwards rather than forwards:
- It is not specific. One of the UK’s leading banks has a vision “to be the UK’s most admired financial services business.” How can anyone in that business align behind that statement? Specifically, what does the bank want to be admired for — customer service, product innovation, profitability, risk management or something else entirely?
- You don’t communicate it. Procter & Gamble CEO A G Lafley talks about communicating a Sesame Street-level of simplicity to the organisation. He told the McKinsey Quarterly (registration needed) about the need for relentless repetition of the message, adding, “They have so many things going on in the operation of their daily businesses that they don’t always take the time to stop, think and internalise.”
- You ignore it. Enron’s vision and values statement began: “As a partner in the communities in which we operate, Enron believes it has a responsibility to conduct itself according to certain basic principles”. It goes on to list these principles as Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence. Your company may not be such an extreme example (I hope!) but unless your leaders consistently act in line with the vision, it is unlikely that the rest of the organisation will. People pay far more attention to actions than they do to words.
Done well a corporate vision can help create focus, alignment and commitment across your organisation. My favourite comes from Southwest Airlines. As former CEO Herb Kelleher put it, “We are the low-fare airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company as well as I can”.
Is your company vision memorable and meaningful?
