How can you make your organization's vision and strategy more compelling?

Purpose is the most powerful guidance to streamline organisations. However, keep it simple and clear - the shorter the better.

As a leader one of the most important elements to make your vision compelling is to have a 'burning' desire to achieve what you are set out to do. Once you demonstrate to the team by executing with passion what your vision is and you keep learning and fine tuning your approach with commitment, the teams start getting aligned and enjoy the journey too.

I also think it is important to tie your personal WHY to the orgs Why. Having that connection early sets the stage for change buy in.

Unless you're developing a vision for the entire business, your primary purpose will be pre-defined because it is the business reason your organization exists. Crafting this purpose into something directly relevant and shaped to your business unit or team is the real trick. Experience suggests to me that a secondary purpose always exists as well, and it's the imperative for the team to achieve the primary purpose together, in an environment of mutual support, in a way that involved and values every individual. If you can communicate this effectively, purpose can be inspirational. While business imperatives change over time, a team working hard for one another is a universal and enduring motivator.

In manufacturing working on implementing lean principles, I learned just how important SMART goals are! You must measure what you want to improve...otherwise, how would you be able to prove you've made progress?

Here we need to pull apart vision and strategy as they are two different things. A vision is an aspirational statement of purpose which is trying to create a shared identity. Ideally it is supported by a handful of tenets that can help establish shared values and ways of thinking about the work a team will do together. Visions are simple, aspirational, and inherently vague. A strategy is a concrete roadmap of the ends you seek, the ways you will seek them, and the resources you will need. It outlines timing, decisions, and dependencies. A vision is a constant beacon, while a strategy will need to shift and adapt and change over time. This is a long way of saying start with first principles. Define what each thing is, then build it.

Aligning your closest advisors and team members around your vision is an essential first step. Without buy-in from those nearest you, you can't expect others to join the cause. While collaboration is valuable and important, visions don't come to committees or to teams - they come to individuals who catch sight of something great. But for the vision to be more than a dream, a team must build on it and the vision must be compelling.

One area where involving the broader team really helps is in defining the assumptions and dependencies that prop up a strategy. Every strategy confronts ambiguity, because if every future possibility potentially impacting the strategy were knowable, perfect plans would exist and leaders would be superfluous. When ambiguity can't be resolved, an assumption must be made to continue strategizing. For example, "consumer demand will conform to the trailing 3-year average, +/-5%." Build out all of your assumptions and then involve your broader team in sharpshooting and refining them. They know the business! Checking these assumptions will later be the heart of your strategic assessment process, and will tell you the risk of going off-track.

The word "vision" should be a guide for you. Your vision is what you see in the future - it is a visual image of what might be, of what could be achieved. A good vision can be described in terms that allow others to "see" it too, and thus be compelled to join you in making that vision come more fully into focus.

Vision connects to values. Since values should never change, even and especially when the organization is under pressure, vision should be constant. Strategies, on the other hand, should the primary sensors alerting the organization of a need to adjust and adapt. If it's been built as a roadmap with goals, ways to achieve them, and resources to support ... and if regular assessments are conducted to understand progress vs the strategy ... it will be instantly evident when the organization is being pushed off-track and needs to course-correct.

The most compelling visions are the ones that throw down the gauntlet that is so relevant to people's daily lives and struggles that they would readily agree to be part of it, but is simultaneously so big that it will require literally a village, or even a town, to fix it! People like to be part of things that are meaningful to them and are much bigger than what they can achieve by themselves. Finally, when the strategy "invites" them to collaborate and partake with an owner's mindset, they feel empowered and welcomed as an equal partner in shaping the outcomes and not being simply told what to do!

Visions are subject to a couple of pitfalls. One is using the vision to test proposals ... e.g. "our vision is about innovating and this action isn't cutting edge at all." The power of a vision lies in its inclusivity; if every team member can touch it and establish a general compass heading from it, you have an unspoken unity of effort. Making it a litmus test will lead to bad decisions, because it wasn't designed as a yardstick or sieve. Another pitfall is a vision being used as a cudgel vs dissent or misaligned behaviours. This will create resentment of the vision. Be clear what it is and what it isn't.