The power of a company vision
Wednesday, November 20, 2024 - Joe Kiedinger
Throughout my years in this industry, I have seen the transformative power of a company vision time and time again. Vision creation is one of the services we offer here at Dignify, and it serves as the basis for deploying your Culture Operating System across your whole company.
It all starts with an overarching vision developed at the executive level to layout goals for the future and clear direction for achieving them within the context of the current reality that faces the company. From there, department leaders and other executives will develop their own visions for their teams which follow a similar format to outline what their department will do to contribute to bringing the executive-level vision into reality.
When done right, a vision statement can serve as a powerful tool that brings people and teams together to achieve one shared goal. I have personally seen visions create positive outcomes for employees at all levels, from executive leaders to line workers, ultimately benefiting the company. I wanted to share some of the most common results I see among organizations with strong vision statements.
Employees are given a purpose and direction
A well-defined vision gives employees a clear sense of what they can do in their role to achieve success and reminds them exactly why their work matters. With a clear understanding of their company’s and department’s vision, employees can do what they need to make it a reality. Clarity from the top-down creates individual effectiveness, and individual effectiveness drives the collective results sought in the vision.
When people know what the company is aiming for in the long-term, they’re more likely to get actively engaged with their work, investing more time, energy, and creativity into their roles. An actively engaged employee is one that you can count on to act consistently in line with the company’s goals and objectives and demonstrate a willingness to go above and beyond to reach both individual and collective success.
To keep this sense of purpose, direction, and engagement alive, be sure to consistently reinforce the vision to your employees. Print out documents with the company vision that they can hang at their desk. Frequently touch on the vision in your group meetings. Remind your employees how their role fits into the vision in individual meetings. Staying consistent like this will ensure the vision has it’s intended impact at the individual level.
Teamwork and collaboration are encouraged
A shared vision brings people, teams, and departments together with one shared purpose. When everyone is working toward the same goal, collaboration happens more naturally. Rather than pulling in opposite directions, collaborators will go into any project or initiative with a mutual understanding of where things need to end up, which makes the whole process smoother. A vision can go a long way towards helping individuals work better together, enabling teams to support each other better, and breaking down silos perhaps before they even form.
Making the vision meaningful
For a vision to resonate with people, you need to make it memorable, and sometimes, even a little bit personal. Here are some things that I commonly look for when I assess the effectiveness of a vision statement:
- Relatability
Add just a bit of personal flair to the vision statement. Don’t use an AI generator to write anything. Sit down, take your time, and even get some help to make every sentence genuinely sound like something you would say. Tie in some elements of who you are as a person, your story and experience, and connect it with the business of it all. Remember, people connect best with other people, not ideas and institutions.
- Honesty
The vision statement should be firmly grounded in the objective current reality of the company. By being realistic (and not too pessimistic or optimistic) about where the company stands, you can ensure that the goals you set in the vision are also going to be realistic and achievable. This is an extremely important part of ensuring that your vision has the intended effect. People will not be motivated to burn themselves out trying to reach an unattainable goal, and they won’t buy into a lowball goal either.
- Memorability
Make sure that the core parts of your vision statement are easily memorable. When I help clients, I like to encourage them to keep their vision to one paragraph only. If you want people to remember any part of the speech, it is the vision itself. So keep it short, succinct, and to-the-point.
Conclusion
A strong vision is like the glue that holds a company together, giving everyone a clear idea of where they’re headed and why their work matters. When it’s genuine, actionable, and memorable, it helps people stay motivated and feel connected to the bigger picture. Getting everyone to pull in the same direction will yield a lot of benefits within any organization, including at the individual level.
JOE KIEDINGER
ACTION PLAN: Challenge yourself to write a vision statement, whether it’s for work, for your family, or just for yourself. Take your time and make it stick.