2025.04.11

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The Importance of Managing Vision

Managing vision is important for all organizations but it can feel weightier for leaders with an inner drive for positive impact in this lifetime.

The vision represents the meaningful positive change in the world that can be made through the activities of the organization or team.

It inspires optimism that the world can be a better place.

It gives everyday work meaning.

It organizes work in a particular, strategic and coherent direction.

Well, an appropriate and well-communicated vision can do those things.

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Gut Check

Here are 2 fundamental questions to assess how well vision is being managed.

• Is the vision the guiding light for which activities are undertaken, and which opportunities are declined?

• Can everyone on your team explain A) what the vision is and B) how the vision relates to their day-to-day work?

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The Skill of Managing Vision

Whether you are involved in setting the vision at the organizational level or are responsible for your business unit or team’s application of it, managing vision is a critical skill to hone.

And it is indeed a skill that can be learned, practiced, and evaluated.

Further, it is a misperception that managing vision just means inspiring/motivating people.

Assuming a coherent vision has been set - one that is big enough to be inspiring but narrow enough to guide the everyday decisions and activities of the staff…

… Which of the following discrete elements of managing vision are done well in your organization overall?

• Inspires and motivates people to achieve the vision.
• Clearly articulates the strategy for achieving the vision.
• Creates mileposts that everyone can understand and rally behind.
• Displays patience with how long it takes to shift the day-to-day activities to be in alignment with a new vision.
• Eliminates roadblocks that would hinder progress toward the vision.
• Avoids vision-creep by saying no to opportunities that aren’t aligned with the stated vision.
• Discerns which activities are mission-critical for the vision and which are “nice-to-do” activities.
• Effectively communicates the vision to others as evidenced by those people being able to subsequently explain it themselves succinctly and know what it means for their own day-to-day work.

No shade, but it wouldn’t be surprising if you could only point to a few as being done well in your organization.

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Why the Disconnect?

If you’ve never seen a list of observable actions that comprise managing vision, like the one above, you’re in good company. Few leaders receive formal training in how to manage vision.

Perhaps the lack of training arises because managing vision isn’t conceptually hard to learn. “Creates mileposts that everyone can understand and rally behind” is fairly self-explanatory.

And it’s likely that taking the time to step back to do the work of thoughtfully articulating the intermediate steps toward a strategic goal, and figuring out how that relates to the organization’s or team’s existing work, gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list in favor of more time-sensitive matters.

But one of the biggest obstacles to leaders managing vision is the discipline it takes to say no to unexpected opportunities that would be awesome, but aren’t strictly aligned with the strategic vision.

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Practicing Prioritization

It feels good to have multiple opportunities and ideas for creating impact. But your organization or team can’t do everything and so choices must be made.

Prioritization is a buzzword that we all toss around, but it remains mission-critical for success in a world of abundant distraction.

Lots of leaders avoid making challenging decisions when they involve tradeoffs. It is uncomfortable to consciously decide not to do a thing of value even though they are devoting resources to a different thing of value.

The “even over statement” is the most effective construct we’ve found to help leaders stick to true priorities in the face of many good activities/options.

An even over statement contains two positive/important things and specifies which is MORE important.

For example:

• new features even over quality customer service
• candid feedback even over harmony
• quality even over speed
• more clients served even over depth of experience
• quality programming even over increased volume
• laser focus on current strategy even over unexpected high-profile opportunities
• employee well-being even over deadlines

Do yourself and your team a favor and have a discussion to identify the activities and work products that result in the most tension and conflicts when it comes to prioritization and set some even over criteria.

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Moving Forward

So now that you can identify the practical activities that make up vision management, what can you do to move forward in your organization?

Questions to Consider

• What would have the most impact on your organization if leaders above you (or the board) did it better?
• What would have the most impact on your team if you did it better?
• What is one concrete thing you will do to better manage vision at your organization, from where you are in the org chart?

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