Vision and Leadership

• Vision can motivate without providing direction.
• The emotionally expressed intention to be the best XYZ is inspiring.
• It gives us something to believe in, work towards, and identify with.
• But a vision doesn't always provide direction, what to do differently.
• There is managerial vision and leadership vision.
• The former motivates performance improvement; this isn't leadership.
• Visionary leadership paints an inspiring picture of what an organization can become.
• It points towards a new future, a change in direction, and hence provides leadership.
• A vision dramatizes new directions that others might not buy into otherwise.
• Vision is hence a useful influence tactic for prospective followers who are resistant to change and who find vivid pictures or images inspiring.
• Vision, however, is not essential to leadership simply because there are other influence tactics available and because people differ in terms of their receptivity to change.
  • setting an example is a form of leadership without vision.
  • simply pointing to a new direction is enough to influence opportunists.
• To inspire change, a vision needs to be concrete, not just motherhood statements.
• It should point to what needs to be done by when and should differentiate you from competitors - otherwise you have provided a statement of values, not a vision.
• Wanting to provide the best customer service in the business is a value statement.
• Attaining a measurable lead on this value in your market in 3 years is a vision.
• However, if you are just trying to be a bit better on several dimensions at what you are already doing, then this borders on being a managerial vision.
• A true leadership vision advocates a more substantive change in direction.
• It depends on your starting point - minor changes suggests a managerial challenge. If you are currently in the dark ages on customer service, then it's a leadership task.
  

Is Vision Essential for Leadership?

•  Some think so. They say that even small ideas like suggesting a modification on a product is based on an implicit vision if not an explicit one.
• But this is stretching the concept of vision to meaninglessness.
• Surely, leading by example is not based on a vision.
• Nor is leading in a crisis.
• The truth is that a vision is required in certain situations, but not others. It is helpful where a large-scale challenge needs to be surmounted in a tight time-frame, like J.F. Kennedy's vision of putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's.
• But an everyday drive to improve profitability by X% is hardly visionary.
  

Challenging conventional thinking about leadership

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