Quick Hit: Is Your Vision a Vestige?

Are you in business to make a buck?

Silly question, I know. Businesses need profits to survive. Even not-for-profits have to operate in a fiscally responsible way.

But when the strategic vision is "profit," the business has nowhere to go and no way to grow.? It's a dead end because the "profit vision" offers no road or guidance to activity that can over time result in the very profit that is being sought. Declaring the target as "profit" is like saying the object of living is to be alive. Indeed, it is. But what one does with the privilege of living is how one learns, grows and prospers. It's no different for organizations.

Most organizations would claim a strategic vision beyond "profit." But can those associated with the organization see it? Are they captured and driven by it? Is this vision widely shared and understood? Is it relevant to today and the future?

Far too often when I have asked organizational participants why their organization is in business and what their vision for it is. the answer I get is either "to make money" or something fuzzy and vaguely associated with what the business has historically done or the products and services it has developed. I call those fuzzy statements "vestige visions," like the appendix or a prehensile tail, something that does describe the organization but is not necessarily relevant to today and the future. At its worst, a vestige vision is akin to envisioning future success for a dinosaur, something that once existed but now is long gone.

For it to have great value, a strategic vision needs to be center stage in the organization and owned by the participants in a way that intensely focuses the organization. An organization with a "vestige vision" is like a boat that is lost at sea.? It may still be going somewhere, but the direction may not be relevant to a successful landfall in a desirable port.

Be honest. Is your organization's strategic vision neither strategic nor visionary? Does it have the "profit vision" or a "vestige vision"?