Vision is a tool that organizations can use to answer the important questions
about where it wants to go and to know when it has arrived. Many leaders have
gone about the process of creating a vision statement, but have not used
vision as a dynamic force in the organization for productivity, stakeholder
satisfaction, and organizational sustainability.
The only thing that is constant is that things change.
Change can be exciting, challenging and can provide opportunities for growth -
or change can cause frustration, and a lack of direction.
When an organization has a vision, the changing environment becomes a positive force. Instead of people being frustrated by change or seeing it as an obstacle, change becomes a partner, providing the fuel (opportunities) for the organization's future.
A vision helps identify opportunities. In a changing environment, new opportunities that can advance the organization toward its desired future continually present themselves. A vision is a lens to identify these opportunities.
A way to influence the future. A vision is a future state that an organization is moving toward. "A vision is a compelling, inspiring statement of the preferred future that the authors and those who subscribe to the vision want to create" (Bezold, 1996, p. 83).
People experience vision differently. Some hear, feel, or sense it, but most commonly visions are a mental image of a future desirable state.
A vision is a long-range prospect that is being worked on daily, but will not be accomplished in the near future.
Through the visioning process, new images of the future are born. While much of the future is out of our control, we can influence the outcome of events by using vision. Vision stimulates imagination, encourages creativity, and helps us identify opportunities that connect future choices with present values, beliefs, and desires.
Margaret Wheatley, who wrote Leadership and the New Science, points out That there is no objective reality out there waiting to reveal its secrets . . . There is only what we create through our engagement with others and with events. . . We inhabit a world that is always subjective and shaped by our interactions with it (Wheatley, 1992 Pp.7-8).
What Wheatly is saying is that, "We do not necessarily create reality, we evoke a potential that is already present" (p. 36). Taking advantage of this idea, a vision aligns the efforts of the organization with potential that already exists to move the organization in the direction of its desired future.
When organizations have a clear idea about their future
Everyone is on the same page and focused on whether an opportunity is in
line with the organization's purpose and future.
"Everything is created twice - first in the mind,
then in the physical world."
- Steven Covey
"A vision acts similar to the connection between magnetic
north and the magnetized needle in a compass."
- Kouzes & Posner
Imagine vision as magnetic north, somewhere in the Arctic Circle, and the magnetized needle of a compass as being human energy and resources. Vision (magnetic north) possesses extraordinary attraction to draw human energy and resources (the magnetized needle) toward it, and it makes the daily functions of its members more interrelated, purposeful, and synergistic.
Vision jump-starts the future. It becomes a rallying call to bring forth the energies, talents, and resources to make things happen. Vision has the capacity to connect people to knowledge, skills, desires, and energy so powerfully that the outcome may be beyond what anyone could have imagined.
"The dream comes first. Then reality chases after the
dream to make it happen."
- Fredrick Hudson
(c) 2010 Center for Creative Leadership
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