S1E2 - Vision - More Than Corporate Poetry

Most vision statements sound great on a poster… and do absolutely nothing in real life. In this episode of Leadership Matters, Glenn Price and Terry Reynolds get brutally honest about why most visions fall flat — and what separates a real rallying cry from corporate wallpaper.

They unpack why leaders play it safe, why courage (not committees) creates compelling visions, and why the CEO must be the Chief Reminder Officer, not the Chief Delegator to Comms. From ambition and purpose to identity and tension, this conversation gets to the heart of what makes a vision stick — and what makes it evaporate the minute the offsite ends.

If your vision isn’t short, sharp, magnetic and lived daily… it’s just ink. This episode shows you how to turn it into impact.

Transcript

Welcome to Leadership Matters, a podcast created by LeaderShape Consulting that helps leaders deliver results. And my name is Glenn Price. joined by my business partner and co-director of LeaderShape Consulting, Terry Reynolds, on this first podcast where we wanted to talk all about vision. And I think most of us would be sitting there going, I know the importance of vision, right? You have to have some sort of true north. But my feeling, is that most of these vision statements, they're either posters on a wall or they're plaques or the sort of corporate poetry instead of a rallying cry that helps leaders move forward. I don't know what you've seen with your research with your clients. Thanks, Glenn. I'm really, really excited about these podcasts series that we've got going and I'm really looking forward to getting into it. It's an interesting question you raised there. 

In my experience, I would say that that most CEOs, most MDs that I'm working with probably play it safe. And that is that they're not really looking to put up too much stretch. They're very, very conservative in the way that they write that vision in the first instance. That's fascinating, right? Because is that, and I know we've talked about this before, is that because they're handed the vision down from maybe a head office globally, it's written by consultants or a marketing team? as opposed to what their ambition is locally. Or what I'm hinting at from listening to you is that people are a little bit scared about going too far and then not reaching it. Yeah, look, I think there's risk involved in writing something and putting yourself out there. So a great vision takes courage from that CEO in the first place, doesn't it? think, you know, we look at the last 20 or 30 clients over the last couple of years that leadership has worked with and fundamentally whether they've delivered results or not and whether they have a vision that really anchors them or not comes down to that leader. So that courage that you talk about is critical. Would you say that, let's take it as a given that a vision needs to be there then. So what would a good vision look like for you then if it takes courage to be able to articulate it and create it? What components need to be in there?

Well, I look at…I think the best visions I've seen are ones that are quite emotive. I think there is a rawness about what people write in there. I think that there's also…they need to be a little bit specific in regards to what it is they're trying to achieve. Well, maybe that's…we…there's different parts, right? So if you think of…often I'll hear somebody say, the fluffy vision, right, which is the more the externally facing marketing line. I'm still a believer that having one of those is important. think digging underneath, I'm reminded of Robert Diltz. So you talk about, well, components of a good vision past that tagline are things like ambition, mission, what are you achieving short term? What's your purpose? I think a lot of organisations I work with, it's almost a vocation to work there, right? People give discretionary effort because of the work they do.

And so purpose and identity all of a sudden come in. And what I've noticed is that if those things aren't all in a line. So rather than just have a single statement for vision, if all of those various components, let's call them, are not in alignment, then we lose momentum and we lose. We definitely leave opportunity on the table. Right. I also don't know with clients that I've worked with, I think a good vision, I often say is the litmus test of decision making. But I think that there is some tension, vision creates some tension. Should we go left or go right between where you are and where you want to be? Do most leaders avoid that discomfort? Do you think you talked earlier about courage? Did they move away from, I don't want to have this so tight that it's uncomfortable to make a decision? 100%. I think that, you know, when, comes down, push comes to shove, I don't think people want to be held down to something. So hence what ends up happening is becomes extremely broad. And that way there's wriggle room for that. I think back to businesses that you and I have been involved in, it's something that you really want to excite people to get out of bed on a Monday and come in and go, this is what it's all about. It excites me, it energises me. Not all visions are like that. Whose job is that though?

I correlate with what or it resonates with me what you say about coming in and I'm not a big one for looking in the mirror and saying an affirmation every single morning. Right. But I do think that a vision, a good one is something that people subscribe to. My question is, whose job is it to hold the vision alive on a day to day basis then? Is it the individual? Is it the team leaders? Is it the CEO? What's your thoughts? My thoughts really is it starts with the it starts with the CEO.

And that is that they need to be living and breathing it. what I've seen is that a great CEO will then impact the executive team, which will, if you like, impacts the masses. But it definitely starts at the top because if you're not living and breathing it from the top, don't think anyone, people don't really have anything to follow. Well, that's true, isn't it?

I think it's Simon Sinek that would agree with you there where he talks about the big why. And if the why is foggy, everything downstream turns into sludge, What are your thoughts though around, you know, there's often this misconception that vision should be built by the team or the masses. Do you believe that it really just is a leadership role? I believe it is.

I'm definitely torn in the vision to results book. We recommend that you at least ask people's opinion Got to be honest with you on a day-to-day basis when I'm coaching a CEO I would say that a vision needs to be leader led and leader initiated It's the reason why you're sitting in that chair for a team let alone an entire organisation and go This is where I think we need to go. This is the capture of the DNA of the sorts of people we need. In Good to Great, the very famous book almost bumped a little bit by now. But he says, you've to get the right people on the bus and work out where it's going. I'm a little bit different. I wouldn't hop on a bus unless I knew where it was going. And so I think it's the driver, the CEO, the leader that could extend out to a leadership team to really discuss, debate and decide what that vision is. And then to have you mentioned it before, the courage to hold on to that and be able to continuously connect people to that over time. Well, that selling of it for the CEO, for the MD, even for the executive team is an extremely key role, isn't it? and I've seen many, Terry, I've seen many leaders almost wash their hands of the vision part and go, coms will come up with that or marketing will come up with that. It's so true what you've just said. They've got to own it from day one, but then continuously be looping back to it as to the big why so that people understand what that is. That reminds me, I guess, if they're doing that continuously, can a strong vision wear out over time? look, I think that what tends to happen, I've seen, is that you do an offsite, you create it, they then launch it, and then they wipe their hands and they're done. I think that the best ones that I've seen work is where it's continued to be raised, it's continued to be mentioned at every meeting. Are we on track? we still believing in this? it's, people are reminded as regularly as possible at any intervention, whether it be a town hall or whether it be just a simple meeting, a team meeting, it's always raised because otherwise what tends to happen, what do we say, big bang fizzle? You know, it's that type of thing that we see all the time. Yay, the fireworks have gone off and now we're done. Let's move on. 

So then that begs the question in my mind is that when does a once great vision no longer fit the world that we live in? And if I answer that for myself and I'd be interested in your opinion, I would try to lean towards not changing my vision too often, how we get there. The strategy, which is in our next podcast, definitely I'm up for a rolling 18 month strategy, right? But I think the vision is an anchor post.

In our book, Dr. Joe Forkman talks about the importance of having a fence post to aim for. And that's to me what that vision is. I wouldn't be looking at changing it every time that there is a new leader on watch. It should be strong enough that it resonates and it's flexible enough and has aspiration enough. It doesn't suffer from a poverty of ambition. And it remains valid for a period of time. We often talk about that idea around, you know, the shining light, the star, you get to the top of the mountain and then it's further on. So then you start to go up the next mountain and then it's further on, et cetera. The question then is do organisations completely change their direction, their vision about what it is they want at some point? Does it become redundant? Well, I think when I think of the clients that we have been able to work with over the last 20 or 30 years. I've definitely seen organisations change their vision, but it's once every 10 years. It's not once every two years. As I said before, how you get there is fluid and certainly requires involvement from more people like you discussed earlier, but the vision itself should remain fairly static when done well. And so like we said earlier in this podcast,

A great vision has lots of different components to it. And so I would say that the vision statement probably doesn't change that much. Maybe the mission does what you're trying to achieve short term. Maybe the ambition, depending on the market, you'll have quite a bullish ambition or you might bring that back. I remember our vision once when we were based in the Middle East was a simple word, survive. Right. So I think you can move the ambition and mission around, your purpose, the reason for the organisation being there, what people buy into, don't think should change that often. Clearly, what you set has an impact on your strategy. And when those two things are disconnected, there is dissonance. And that's why in our next podcast, we're going to be talking about strategy. So this first podcast was all about vision. And Terry and I wanted to leave you with some top tips for leaders on how you can drive vision into reality.

First thing, number one, keep the vision short, sharp and sticky. It can't be said in a sentence. It's not going to be remembered. And if it can't be remembered, it won't be executed on. So keeping it short, sharp and sticky is really important. 

Two, try to make it magnetic, not mandatory. What we mean by that is a great vision doesn't need reinforcement. It simply pulls people in emotionally. It connects with them and engages with them intellectually. They just get it. You don't need to spend a long time explaining it because the right sorts of people buy into it. Certainly, back to your point, Terry.

The third thing is to re-communicate it. Don't rewrite it. Mostly to scrap a vision too early. They go, we need to change that. People haven't brought into it. But what we would suggest is that they need to re-energise how they're connecting people to it. And that's a role that, back to what you said earlier around courage needs to be there, but also the competence of lot of leaders in being the chief reminder officer is not there either.

Try to link that vision to daily reality. The best leaders that we've worked with at LeaderShape can certainly explain how today's decisions ladder up to tomorrow's ambition. And they're constantly on that flight path showing base camps and rewarding people for the activities that get us the result that we're looking for, not just the result in and of itself. 

And then last of all, don't ask, does everybody know the vision? It's not about them knowing it, it's whether they believe it. And we're going to pick that up on a separate webcast as well called Believability. So I'd like to close this first podcast. Firstly, thank you, Terry, for the conversation. Second, reflective challenge for you in the audience that are listening. If your vision disappeared from the company website tomorrow, would anybody notice? Thanks for listening.