Harvard Business Publishing

A shared vision stated either in words or in action motivates everyone in an organization to collectively work towards a common goal and have fun while doing it. It not only gives them a basis to constantly improve their skills and performance at their individual jobs and team assignments but also in a much broader sense gives them a reason to willingly show up for work on a daily basis. Without such clarity of corporate vision, a job becomes nothing more that that: just a job.

Whether the shared vision is creative or destructive in nature is also important to consider but I will leave that for another discussion.

Raj Bose
Faculty - University of Phoenix

"Without such clarity of corporate vision, a job becomes nothing more that that: just a job."
I like this very much!

A good leader should always make clear what should be done and inspire his/her workers at the same time. a good vision thing can be good only when the workers are inspired to do what they thought to do .

It is rare to come across companies whose employees share the same vision or can even state it in simple words. Either the vision has normally been lost after being finalised as an impressive statement in the board room or its stated in flowery words and then sent across as a STATEMENT.

But how does it become a common vision? The drive through leadership at the top and their involvement in making it being filtered and understood and creating that BUY-IN is rare. Internal communication, or as I wrote in my article "Power of Internal Branding" is an intrinsic element but rarely addressed with the same attention.

Being a strategist I come across many vision statements stating vision and mission but rarely see it in action. Mere lip service and stating of the vision is not where it should be left at. It should be filtered and hampered and bred in till each person across the board can at least KNOW what it is about.

And then adding small wins and demonstrating how as a team the success is being met and what difference it has created. People need to link the stated vision towards mission accomplished and the path is right. That’s what will make people jump on and buy in voluntarily.

And all of it comes down to leadership: the intergrity, level of commitment, and involvement.

Is it fair to say that a statement of vision is the sum of a goal greater than the sum of its individual contributors (ie. members of the organization and the customers)?

The GLOBE research project found 'providing vision' to be one of the universal (ie applicable across all cultures) aspects of effective leadership.

Effective leaders use vision to inspire hope and tap into humanities search for meaning in our lives - and lets face it, work is a large part of this for most of us.

The problem is that like strategic planning, visioning is often done as mechanistic process that produces a nice vision statement but stops there.

Real visioning is about reframing the events of the moment, every day, to motivate people to create something worthwhile. Leaders use stories and analogies to communicate the vision in ways that hit home to the audience within the context of the moment. Further, leaders create hope by highlighting aspects of the vision that are already bubbling into reality.

Kindest Regards

Dear Sir,
Shared Vision is an integral part of successful organizations, for any organizational success all the internal customers as well as the external customers must have vision and expectation respectively.
It is basically the commitments the firm’s(top management) gives to both the internal and external customers and the stakeholders.
It reminds me of British Airways it used to say in its advertisements
"Your Satisfaction Is Our Business".
Vision sets a direction in which the organization should move upward and onward.
Many a times it has been seen large business nosedives as it's the vision of the business gets blurred and in turn it becomes directionless. Vision helps to develop a culture of organizations. Culture is the set of values, which all the employees follow in order to achieve excellence.

Warm Regards,
Debashish Bramha.

Vision decisions are of course culture dependent. In the US visions and grand statements might help persuade the employees, but in other countries, there might be a suspicion of the "vision" and slogan. I think it would be better in those cases to have quarterly competitions for employees to come up with some of the vision decisions themselves.

Visions can certainly inspire. Also people want to find meaning and fulfillment in what they do.
When people work in a culture that has been shaped by their own values and where a vision has evolved from these values rather than companies imposing values and visions, you create far greater potential for people and consequently the organisation to thrive and deliver performances far beyond expectation.

When cultures and visions are built based on the values of empoyees, my experience is, it becomes easy to motivate and inspire.

The work by Richard Barrett & Associates,
Building a values driven organisation gave me much food for thought on this topic too.

Good read!
Shouldn't vision statement be created at the start of a business?
I'm not sure how many employees are even familiar with or understand the vision of an organization that they are working for. Is vision only for executives to know and understand and to be imposed on employees?
South West has a mission statement and SWA's vision is hidden in their history. http://www.southwest.com/about_swa/airborne.html
So as I understand entrepreneurs may have their own way of establishing their businesses. However, having a vision is seeing possibilities.
-----
Ajay Hayer