Everything You Need to Write a Compelling Vision
If you want speed, clarity can help. One of the best ways to clarify is to craft a compelling vision for the future. At it’s best, crafting a vision can define what your team or organization should be focused on, inspire action, and help everyone make decisions to support that vision. At it’s worst, it’s a forgettable exercise that produces jargon and eye-rolling.
I’ve seen visions work well, but one of the most underrated elements of creating a vision is the fact that leaders need to align on what the organization is actually about. Gathering your founders or leaders and answering some of the basic questions about what problem you’re excited to solve in the world is an insightful activity. Not surprisingly, leaders often have differing perspectives on this question.
This work needs someone steering the conversation. A vision conversation left unmanaged will derail any hopes of productivity. You can use the kit below to lead the conversation yourself or give it to someone who can facilitate. In my experience, you can get 90% of your vision done within an hour.
The best visions will require creativity and preferably someone with copywriting or marketing experience who can finish what the team starts.
Here is a completely free vision creation guide that has everything you need to get started.
A final thought as you set out define your vision: You want to strive for a balance between grandiosity and specificity, descriptive but simple. It’s easy for a vision to end up as a meaningless but well-intentioned statement like “we make people happy.” (this is a real vision statement from a company that I’m sure also wants to make money. We can all agree that happiness is good and that you should give it to people if you can, but that’s not what you’re really trying to do is it? If it really was, you’d run a non-profit that brings comedians with dogs and giant inflatable houses to hospitals.)
In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, don’t let your vision “disappear up it’s own ass.”