What is vision?

Vision is generally considered an essential part of leadership

today. The problem is that it is used widely, and often wrongly, to
describe a multitude of leadership and business aspects within the
organisation. So what is vision? Before you begin to create and roll
out your vision, it is essential to pinpoint exactly what vision is, how
it is linked to the leadership role and how it can be effectively used.

Leadership and vision

A first step in understanding vision is to understand how and why it is linked to the notion of leadership.
For leadership focuses on leading to believe otherwise which means involving others in the process of accomplishing
a goal within some larger system or environment.
At its origin, the word leader comes from the Old English/Germanic leaden or lithan meaning to go, to cause to go
with or to travel.
Vision and leadership are therefore intrinsically linked – to help people to go somewhere.

Leaders and vision

By studying great leaders and their visions, we can find a common set of characteristics between them. Vision is
the higher purpose beyond actions which motivate people towards successfully carrying out their mission. It is not
the capacity or the way to carry out things, but the ability to actually see, show and tell people where they or the
organisation will go and what it will look like. For leaders are people committed to ‘creating a world to which people
want to belong’ and the world they show us the path to is described and explained in their vision.

Clarifying the meaning of vision

Vision is often, misleadingly, used to describe a number of aspects in leadership and business within an organisation.
Notable difficulties arise when speaking of strategy, goals and objectives, not in the least because they are all closely
tied within the sphere of vision.

Vision, strategy, goals and objectives

• Vision appeals to the wider perspective or system. It is both inspirational and motivating and deals with the very
long term and is perennial in nature.
• Strategy is used as a means for achieving a result and constitutes a plan usually involving a combination of resources
and methods.
• Goals and objectives are very specific things that we aim for. They constitute a destination usually containing
steps, stages and definite time frames.

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Vision, ambition and mission
• Vision is outwards oriented. This means that you are aiming for something in the longer term for your teams and/or
your customers. It relates to purpose and the wider perspective, system or environment.
• Ambition is inwards directed. It concentrates on what you or your teams want to be, what role you uniquely play
and who you want to be with respect to the customers and the vision.
• Mission is what you do uniquely to help reach the vision. It is your (or your teams’/organisation’s) specific contribution.

The attributes of vision

Effective vision or envisioning – the rolling out of a vision to your teams and organisation – has a number of key
attributes. These must be taken into consideration when creating your vision and implementing it to ensure
authenticity and effectiveness.
• Vision sets the course to be followed in the long term
It provides an image of what lies ahead in the long term and how it will bring benefit to all. Often, it is not an obvious
conclusion or observation of what is going on at the time. The vision is what you are aiming at, in the long term for
yourself, your customers or stakeholders.
• Vision involves achieving challenges that turn into competitive advantages
Your vision contains business insight and innovation that help build a commanding position for your team
or organisation.
• Vision inspires the creativity as to how to reach the goal
With vision the goal is clearly defined, but it also inspires the creativity as to how to reach it. This creativity is
translated by the various strategies and developments implemented to reach the vision’s final goal.
• Vision generates inconsistency between resources and ambitions
A vision needs to stretch people and resources in order to create the inspiration and motivation required to reach
the goal. It has to be far away enough to challenge people, but not too far away to make them believe it is impossible.
• Vision brings the future to the present
It does not take the present to the future. Bringing the future to the present means showing people what the new
and different world will look like, very much like an ‘as if’ scenario.

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