Wednesday feels like a good day to write about visioning – half the week has gone, and the other half is still to come; and I wonder what will it look like, feel like, sound like and be like, if this week delivered the best outcome you could hope for? By the time you kick your shoes off for a weekend of leisure time, family time or different work, would you have achieved that vision? I know that two days hence is very short-term visioning, but it is still a look to the future from the present, and probably easier to predict than the expectation placed on leadership to prophet five years hence.
For leadership to create followership, it must have a strong and inspiring image of a compelling future – one that all stakeholders want to be a part of. A vision is a snapshot of the future and defines what it will look, sound and feel like when you have achieved your purpose – a compelling, desirable and tugging photograph of the future, that evokes all the senses with desire for it.
As an Executive Coach, I experience CEO’s and senior leaders who stress, and trip up over vision as they attempt to engineer it into a word-smithed little strapline, that often loses its essence and magic in an over-processed, jargonistic phrase which has none of the taste and true flavour of desire left in it. In that setting, I encourage my client to go back to basics, and I begin with one of the best questions to elicit vision: “what do you most yearn for?”. A ‘yearning’ is an inner beacon of desire and hope. It is optimistic in its structure, and if I invited you right now to close your eyes and ask yourself, “what do I yearn for?” I would bet that you feel that word ‘yearn’ somewhere in your body, and probably in your heart area. It is one of those power words that evokes emotions and feelings about a most hoped for future or most desired future self. Visions are a combination of imagination, wisdom, and emotion, and whilst invented in our head, they are felt in our heart, and are then spoken allowed in words that others can understand and imagine too. It is no coincidence that halfway between our head and our heart is our mouth – leaders must use this wisely. As coach, I then pin back my ears and allow their voice to describe and feel that future yearning through words. Through appreciative enquiry, encouragement and silence, I listen, and keep listening whilst they empty every aspect of their most hoped for future. I keep asking, “And is their anything more that you yearn for in that most hoped for future?”, until they are done. They now have clarity of what that future is like, and I encourage them to take a minute or two, to write it all down, and if required, I can replay phrases, emotions, triumphs as they gather their reflections and capture the magic in the photograph of their vision narrative. Most leaders, inspired by what they have created, want to share this with their wider team to capture their inputs too. That makes sense, it is better and more effective to build a shared vision than share a built vision.
I have also been invited to facilitate this creative process with the team, and using our Worklife Journey process, guide them to map their vision, and represent it in whichever form works best for them and their leadership context.
The next step is to hone vision into a clear mission, which then forms the basis of strategy. Mission turns the tug of vision into action and gives it a deadline. Whilst vision is based in the internal world of yearning, Mission is in the external world of commitment and action. The first is feminine, and the second masculine. We need both in balance. A mission without a vision is often self-serving and short-lived, as it is based making a gain and not making an impact.
To define ‘Mission’ we will turn to the work of Professor David Grove. He was first to understand the six steps of separation between a person and their vision. Since then, his work inspired others to test six steps of separation in many other aspects of life and relationships. His original work discovered that many people do not achieve their vision because the gap between current reality and desired future remains a chasm, thereby pushing the goal or vision continuously into the future. As the everyday-mundane and demands of life take over, our vision stays out there as an ethereal wish, never to be achieved. What David discovered is that instead, we should pull the goal towards us, by understanding the principles of the six steps of separation and desire – as you achieve each step in turn, you pull the vision to the present. What you think about, desire, and action, you bring about.
When facilitating or coaching leaders to first define their vision, and then the six steps of separation, we uncover the six bold goals or milestones that will achieve their vision; and then the resulting map or timeline to achieve the outcome faster. It is that timeline that offers the deadline for the vision, and offers the short, clear aim that wordsmiths itself into a mission statement. For example, imagine a company mission statement written as follows: ‘By year end 2029 we will be the number one most profitable children’s bicycle manufacturer in the UK’ apart from the Finance Director, I couldn’t imagine one single member of staff who would be compelled to bounce out of bed in the morning for that, nor one single child who would wish for that brand of bicycle in a letter to Santa. Instead, what would be miles better, is a mission statement that embodies your promise and aim as a company, and draws customers, staff and communities to play a part in its success:
By way of real example, I think Patagonia has built this clarity of purpose, vision, mission, and values so well into all that they do as a business.
One final word of caution, your future is still more mystery than mastery. Therefore, leadership, whilst having clarity of direction must be flexible in its delivery and implementation. Afterall, the map is not the terrain, and whilst you know where you are headed, you must remain malleable to which route will get you there. I have learned that lesson so many times in my own business across 25 years. The power of personal adaptability and resilience is paramount – and if you don’t have that in spades, find yourself an Executive Coach and trusted advisor for the journey of leading change. You will need both of those sherpas.