AN IDEAS INTO ACTION GUIDEBOOK
Communicating Your Vision
IDEAS INTO ACTION GUIDEBOOKS
Aimed at managers and executives who are concerned with their own and others’ development, each guidebook in this series gives specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership problem.
| LEAD CONTRIBUTORS | Talula Cartwright |
| David Baldwin | |
| CONTRIBUTORS | Karen Bryson |
| Paul Damiano | |
| George Houston | |
| Richard Hughes | |
| Gene Klann | |
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS | Martin Wilcox |
| EDITOR | Peter Scisco |
| ASSOCIATE EDITOR | Karen Mayworth |
| DESIGN AND LAYOUT | Joanne Ferguson |
| CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS | Laura J. Gibson |
| Chris Wilson, 29 & Company |
Copyright © 2006 Center for Creative Leadership.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
CCL No. 432
ISBN-13: 978-1-882197-96-5
ISBN-10: 1-882197-96-8
CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEADERSHIP
AN IDEAS INTO ACTION GUIDEBOOK
Communicating Your Vision
Talula Cartwright and David Baldwin
THE IDEAS INTO ACTION GUIDEBOOK SERIES
This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) has generated, since its inception in 1970, through its research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared—in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today’s leadership and organizational challenges.
The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL’s mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. We think you will find the Ideas Into Action Guidebooks an important addition to your leadership toolkit.
Table of Contents
Examples of Communicating a Vision
EXECUTIVE BRIEF
A vision has to be shared in order to do what it is meant to do: inspire, clarify, and focus the work of your organization. One part of your job as a leader is to create commitment to your organization’s vision. In order to do this, you have to communicate the vision effectively. In this guidebook we suggest many ways to communicate a vision. We also discuss how to deal with a resistant audience and what to do in the event that you yourself are resistant. You’ll learn how to communicate a vision to others in ways that will help them understand it, remember it, and then go on to share it themselves.
Why You Need a Vision
Leaders in today’s organizations face issues of growth, change, customization, globalization, and technology that force them to create new pathways toward success and sustainability. But a newly blazed strategic trail cannot itself create the focus, the underlying tactics, and the foresight necessary for long-term growth and deep impact. As Richard Hughes and Kate Beatty point out in Becoming a Strategic Leader, many organizations that falter have failed to effectively communicate their strategies. Employees do not understand their role in implementing the organization’s mission and strategy. Leaders can adopt many tactics for coordinating messages and creating alignment among employees, whether at the unit, team, or organizational level. One effective tactic is to transmit strategic intent through a vision—an imagined or discerned future state that clearly captures the organization’s direction and defines its destination.
What a Vision Is
A vision describes some achievement or some future state that the organization will accomplish or realize. It inspires, clarifies, and focuses the work of an organization for a significant time. A vision differs from goals, which express the steps of a plan for accomplishing an objective. A vision differs from a mission statement, which explains an organization’s reasons for existence or for seeking its objectives.
Henry Ford’s vision was a car that families could afford. Steve Jobs dreamed that aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-use personal computers would have mass appeal and unleash popular creativity. Whatever your organization’s vision may be, communicating that vision is a unique challenge. Employees may disagree about organizational values, or they may be unwilling to change or to be influenced in a particular direction. They may misunderstand the leader’s intent or have trouble imagining the future state expressed in the
