Casting Vision in All Levels of Leadership | ft. William Vanderbloemen

In this episode of the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, Jared sits down with William Vanderbloemen to unpack why vision isn't just a top-level conversation—it's the fuel that drives every part of a healthy organization. From pop quizzes on vision statements to the concept of "uber vision," they explore why vision clarity at all layers of leadership is critical for building, running, and keeping great teams.

Key discussion points include:

• Vision at Every Level: Why it's not enough for just the leadership team to know the vision—and how to make sure everyone from the receptionist to the CEO is aligned.

• Uber Vision vs. Vision: How setting a high enough North Star can create momentum that carries the whole team farther than ever imagined.

• Turning Vision into Action: Why casting big vision must be paired with clear, practical steps so teams don't feel overwhelmed but empowered.

• Navigating Changes: How the age and size of an organization affect how quickly (or slowly) vision shifts can happen—and why urgency matters. (For a deeper dive into leading through change, check out our episode Leading Through Change).

• The Power of Repetition: How Aristotle's principle of "reminding people of what they already know" helps leaders reinforce vision without sounding redundant.

• Vision and Organizational Growth: Why understanding the founding heartbeat of an organization can help you contextualize vision for the future.

Whether you're leading a startup, a growing team, or a historic organization, this episode will help you sharpen your vision-casting skills, energize your team, and swing the pendulum farther toward meaningful impact.

Resources

Follow William on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvanderbloemen/
Follow Vanderbloemen on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanderbloemen/
Subscribe to the Vanderbloemen YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@vanderbloemensearchgroup

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the Vander Bloom and Leadership Podcast where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hey, welcome, and we're so glad that you've chosen to spend some time with us today helping you build, run, and keep a great team. And today we're going to be talking about something that is necessary for every team, regardless of your size, regardless of your uh number of employees, and that is vision at all levels of leadership. William, I know this is something that you have done very well here at Vanderblumen, is making sure all levels of uh employment understand the North Star. What are just some maybe initial thoughts that come to mind when you think about, hey, how do we make sure that everyone, whether it be from the top of the org chart to the bottom, understand what is our North Star and our vision.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Yeah, so let's just pull in the whiteboard, and if you could write out our vision statement for me, that'd be helpful.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah, yeah. I got it. Helping, we want to help teams go, churches and organizations go further and faster than ever before.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Is that suggesting that it's part of it? But leaders, we're doing a podcast on this, and it is not clear enough. We help Christian teams go farther and faster by solving their people problems. Jared almost got it, and you know why you didn't get it? Because I'm not preaching it enough. It has nothing to do with him. It is on me. If you pop quizzed your staff, you probably don't want to. Because you probably don't want to hear the answer unless you're an extraordinary leader. And we actually get to do searches for a lot of extraordinary leaders. And I ask this question when we go in, when we're, you know, placing a staff person. I asked the the person, I was at a uh a boat company.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

You know, we do a lot of church stuff, but this was a boat company that's owned by a Christian family. Great, great group. And when I first went to meet with them, I was talking to the receptionists, and they probably got, I don't know, seven or eight hundred employees or something like that. And I asked the receptionist about the vision of the company, repeated it, verbatim. Wow. Right. And why do you like working here? Well, actually, I get to work here.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

And went into all the great things about the cut. That's when you know you've got a fantastic leader. When everyone can repeat it on a pop quiz, and it's highly unusual. So if you fail the pop quiz, it's not the end of the world. And we did not stage this just now. Like that's real-time stuff. So I it to me, Jared, it's something I think I can get better at. And every leader who thinks they're great at it, uh, probably isn't. Like the best leaders I know still say they really need to work on it. Yeah, I'm gonna invoke a name that people are not gonna like. Okay, but Bill Hybels founded Willow Creek Church. He had a very unfortunate exit. We were actually asked and honored to come in and help sort of untangle the knot that happened in the wake of that. And and we were very blessed to help them find their next leader who we signed to a five-year contract, he did five faithful years, and then handed off to the next person amazingly. But Bill used to say, We're here, and I can still say his vision statement, I didn't work for we're here to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ. Wow. And I mean, he drilled it home so that everyone knew it. There are few leaders that have done that, but there are so, so few. So I would just say one thing I'm learning as I'm getting older is I've got to put the vision out there. And if it's not uh a verbatim spit back, at least your team should know there's the win. Yeah. The only reason I think a vision exists is to give people an inspiration for an outcome. And if they can recognize the outcome, then that's pretty dang close to knowing what the vision is. There's the win. I like I I can't remember the exact words of the vision, but when I see us place somebody and it frees up a team to go farther and faster for Jesus, when I see that happen, I know we've got the win. So leaders coming from a guy who's been at it a long time. I got room to improve. So much room. How are you doing? What would happen if you did a pop quiz and said, hey, janitor, why are we here? What's the reason we're doing all of this? If they can't even get close, if they can't even name part of the end zone, it's not their fault. It's yours and mine. And that's maybe the main job of me as the the founder of this organization is to try and pump that vision out there every single week. And apparently I've still got room to do more work. Well, I got the North Star at least.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

You got the North Star, I got the gist of it. I got the gist. You did good. But anyways, I I think that it's it's so it's so crucial for, like we said, the janitor, the receptionist, and even the the the the lead, the team leads, and whomever, all members of the team, to understand why we exist, what we're doing. Is there maybe a different way, a different tone that you're using, um, a different type of language that you're using in when you're talking about the vision of the company uh to someone who is maybe on the lower side of the leadership versus the higher up uh side of the leadership, a different access maybe to even information, or speak to that?

SPEAKER_02 6:03

No, I think the vision's consistent no matter what. And and I think the uh the lesson I'm learning, and you've started to hear me use this language some, I'll give you a sneak preview into some. Uh there's vision and then uber vision. That's what I'm learning. Vision and then uber vision. We're here to help Christian organizations go farther and faster by solving their people problems. Yeah, right. That's the vision. The uber vision let's overpopulate heaven.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

How cool would that be? Yeah. Let's overpopulate, let's get to heaven and have Jesus say, Why did you bring all of these people?

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

And you say, Well, dude, you're the one who said, Go get them out of the streets and everywhere. That's right. And and if we can, so here's the thing in whether it's churches, schools, or nonprofits, now, value-based businesses may be a little different, but churches, schools, and nonprofits, which is most of our work, there are only two problems that are always in front of the leader. There's some problems that pop up seasonally or from time to time, a building program or a Easter or a Christmas, but there are only two that really keep the leaders up at night. One of them is funding.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

And one of them is people problems.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

It's true.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

And we, you know, funding we'll hand off to somebody else. But the people problems, man, if we can solve those, if you think about it, leader, when you've been with your staff and you're all in harmony and in a good spot, how much more did you get done? Yeah. So, yes, we help solve people problems, but the uber vision, the why behind that is well, if we could get all those teams in harmony and they could go out there on the front lines of Team Jesus and get something really great done, we might overpopulate heaven.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

And that's a great, great, that's the Uber vision.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Here's why I'm trying to develop an Uber vision. When we did the study for Be the Unicorn, it's a book we wrote, it's probably yep, right there. Uh, we looked at the very best candidates that we'd ever interviewed, and we said, do they have anything in common? And we found 12 habits that all the best of the best have in common. And one of them is they are purpose-driven people. Okay. So here, if you study people who live with a North Star, you'll find all high achievers have a North Star. They all have a vision. Uh, there are some people out there in the corporate world in sales that aren't real nice, but their goal is to beat last year's number. And they've got a goal. They've got a goal. They're going to shoot for the goal, and they go. Here's what we learned in our study of these unicorns. Uh, a vision is almost like the fulcrum of a pendulum. Okay. Okay. So, so, like in a pendulum, you've got the fulcrum and then the uh the fulcrum and then the the swinging part of the pendulum, right? And if you've got a high north star, you can swing, you can go farther on your mission based on your fulcrum. Guess what? If the fulcrum is higher, the pendulum swings farther and you can get more done. Higher more, it can swing farther and get more done. And the data that we found was the higher your vision, the farther your team will go. Yeah. And I've made the mistake so many times as a younger leader of setting the vision too low. Let's have record Easter attendance. Yeah. That's a goal, but it's not a vision. Let's let's uh try and win some new people to do. Let's grow the church. Like, mm-mm. How about let's overpopulate heaven? So I'm trying to reach for one that's so high, it gives us a fulcrum that if everybody catches it and grabs on, we're gonna swing so far out and get things done that only God gets the credit. Yeah, it's not even close. Yeah, couldn't be something we dreamed of. So, so what I'm trying to do, and maybe this helps you as a leader, is say, how do I take what I understand is our vision and elevate it to Uber vision so that we get a higher fulcrum and we can go farther. That's that's just something that I'm working on.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yeah, I love that. The one of the things that we've mentioned a little bit is when we're and this may be vision isn't the right word, but I do this came to mind, and I want to talk about it a little bit, is that there are some members that are a part of teams that when they hear big, big vision, the type of vision that can really take a team really far, uh, they can maybe be a little bit overwhelmed by it. And maybe you can make them a little bit scared and a little bit uneasy. Um, I want to talk about uh and hear your thoughts about um how do uh you as a leader handle situations like that? Uh, because you know, we want to have a very high North Star, a high, a high vision. And vision, maybe again, is not the right word there, but um, you know, what what would you say to the leaders who maybe are dealing with that kind of situation?

SPEAKER_02 10:57

Yeah, I think we're all dealing with it. And uh, I made the mistake many times of casting a big, bold vision and then not giving any. And here's how we're going to get it done. Yep. So, you know, I can say, let's go overpopulate heaven. If I just say that with no plan, I might have 20 street preachers out on the corner this Friday night. Yeah. Which, hey, if that's your thing, more power to you. Green berets of the kingdom, right? But uh, but it's not for everybody. And it's not, no, we're gonna help overpopulate heaven. How? Well, people problems are one of the most persistent problems in Christian organizations. If we can solve some people problems, we're gonna free teams up to go farther and faster. And if those teams can go, if we stay in our little lane and do our job and our clients can go farther and faster, we've got a shot at being a part of a thing that overpopulates heaven. So it's uh it's just breaking it down. It's the the how do you eat an elephant?

SPEAKER_01 11:57

One bite at a time.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

One bite at a time. That's all.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

And it and it uh can sound crazy, but if you'll then take some time after the crazy to say, and here's how we're going to do it, well then then you've got uh a really powerful vision. And it and it doesn't need to all be on you. So one thing one of my mentors taught me uh many years ago was cast the vision and then say now in our five main departments of our church or our school or our nonprofit, you've got five, so there are five areas where we're gonna be achieving this. And Jared has agreed to take the the part that is his and he's gonna run with it. And here are the tangible outcomes Jared's gonna have in marketing so that we're able to get this done. Yep. And Tim has agreed on this team, he will be the champion for this part of us helping teams go farther and faster so that we can be a part of overpopulating him. Yeah, and then so name champions and name how they're going to get to it. So it's not all on you. And by the way, leader, you should never be the hero, right? So hand it off to others. Jared's agreed to do this, Tim's agreed to do that, Sarah's going to do this, Jen's going to do that. And now when you cast that big vision, people are like, okay, okay, this is now in something digestible. Yep. And our team has said we have champions, and you can break it down a little farther and say, and that means that this year we're gonna go after these key result areas. Yeah. If we get these little things done this year, we'll be on our way to vision and the Uber vision.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

That's great. That's great. Maybe let's hit on some of the challenges that you've seen and maybe some that you've even faced yourself in uh making sure that the vision is understood throughout all the layers of leadership and and not that just like some areas really get it, but all of them get it. And maybe if you have a story or something to speak to that and making some challenges and uh how we can go about maybe correcting those.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Yeah, well, let's let's talk about uh the age of your organization.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

That's great.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Okay. So so we're in a spot where we're between 17 and 18 years old. So we're not brand new.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Right? But we're also not uh the church I served as senior pastor at First Prize Houston. You know, Sam Houston went to church there. That's old. Yeah, they've been reaching lost people for a long time. That was even before the nineteens. That was in the eighteens, right? Yeah. Uh yeah. So I mean, the old line was uh when they baptized Sam Houston, all the fish downstream died. Oh so we've been reaching lost people for a long time, right? Yeah, so uh you know, when I was working there, one of the few things I got right was rather than try and come up with some brand new vision, I tried to look backward and get a full analysis of what the church had done. No church was ever planted, I've said this so many times. Sorry if you've heard it before. No church was ever planted with the vision statement of let's build something boring.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Where everybody fights.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

And we can have lots of committees. That is never and meetings. That's never been the vision of a church when it got planted. So, leader, if you're in an older or more established organization, go read the very first charter of your organization. Go read all the board minutes, and you'll start to see a theme of how your church has lived out its mission over the years, and you can start to build on that. You can actually use it for some change initiative. If you can show people, I showed people, First President Houston was the first one to do this, so more people would know about Jesus. First steeple in the city, first church on the radio, first church on television, first church with a church cookbook in Texas, all so the word could get out. Guess what that does? It makes people go, well, that's what we've always been. We need to keep doing that. And when you come out with your crazy new idea tied to a vision, you can say, This is who we've always been. Yeah. This is what we're about. Let's go keep doing it. So so understanding how you cast vision can vary greatly depending on the uh age of the overall establishment. That's great. Younger ones, it's pretty tight. It's on you. You name the vision of hammer at home. Irrespective of age, I think uh repeat, repeat, repeat. That's great. It's like the old sermon advice. You tell them what you're gonna talk about, and then you tell them what you talk about, and then you talk about what you're gonna talk about, and then you tell them what we've talked about. That's great. And you keep the main point, the main point about the main point. Yeah. And you repeat, repeat, repeat. And you think, oh, that's just rudimentary, William. My congregation is more sophisticated than that. Okay, let's get sophisticated. Let's talk Aristotle.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Okay. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

So it's a degree in religion and philosophy, right? Yep. By the way, uh a little career advice. Do you know what most philosophy degree people spend their entire career doing?

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Uh I don't.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Yeah. They spend their entire career saying, Would you like fries with that?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

I was gonna say, I was gonna say if they something about making a latte or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you want? With whip or without? Someone's right. That's a better version, a more modernized, right. So uh so let's talk Aristotle. Aristotle said the greater part of instruction is being reminded of the things you already know. Now he was a pretty smart dude. He was. Maybe the cornerstone of Western thought. Yep. If he's telling you the greater part of instruction is being reminded of the things you already know, why are you worried that you're repeating your vision too often? That's great. I'm not repeating it enough, or everyone would be able to say it verbatim. Very few leaders do that, and they're worried that they don't sound innovative. They're worried that they don't sound creative, they're worried that they sound repetitive. The greater part of instruction is being reminded of the things you already know. Leader, keep casting your vision, cast it higher and higher and higher so your team can swing out farther and farther and farther. Keep reminding them of what they already know.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

That's great. You know, when you spoke on it a little bit, um, but the contextualization of vision, um, I want to hear some of your thoughts on that. Because, you know, as an organization gets older, maybe you go and change from, and we've spoken before of how philosophically an organization can change, of hey, we're maybe really about disciples, making disciples, making more disciples, which is great. And then maybe they shift to something that is more, hey, we're gonna be more salvation and um, you know, like getting new believers, uh, philosoph that that change in vision. Uh I want to know, is there ever a time for like a I guess a recontextualization of the vision of an organization? And how when those changes are made, maybe, maybe small, maybe big, when they are made, how do we make sure that it is well communicated? Again, it going back to the all layers of the organization.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Yeah. Yeah. So so how quickly can the vision be changed? Yes. That's uh what I'm hearing you ask, right? Um and and we talked about the age of an organization, and there's also a size of the organization. The bigger the organization is, uh, is kind of like the older an organization is. Yep. So there's probably an XY graphic that you could do for age and size, and that's going to show you some kind of time. But but let's think of it like uh boats in our Navy. Okay. So for international listeners, which we're doing a lot of international search work now, sorry, you got the U.S. Navy to deal with right now. Um, if you are a PT boat, okay, right, and you need to turn, it doesn't take long. You ever play battleship?

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Okay. Still play battleship. It's on the phone, but yeah. So on the phone, but yeah. So the PT boat's like this big, right? Yeah. It can turn. Yeah. How big is that aircraft carrier?

SPEAKER_01 20:29

It's a little bit bigger.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

A little bit bigger. It was five little things when you put the thing when you actually played board games, right? Yep, yep. Okay. Sorry. I don't know if that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

I remember those way back in the day.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

You read about them. They're from the 19s. That's right. Yeah. So uh the aircraft carrier is the big long thing, a PT boat. Well, in real life, if you were to ask the Googles or the AIs, how long does it take a PT boat to do a 180? Yeah. Versus how long does it take an aircraft carrier to do it? It you can do the math. The bigger your organization, the older your organization, the longer it takes to turn the ship, and the more care has to be done.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

That's great.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Okay. Here's the one exception.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

If there's an iceberg in front of you, everybody will work hard to turn real fast. Yep. You may not get it turned real fast, but uh there there is uh, you know, the the number one rule, we did a podcast sometime back, maybe we can link back to it on uh leading change. The number one rule of leading change is you've got to show people that there's urgency before they're willing to make a sudden change.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

The number one goal of a large organization is to resist rapid change. That's sociology 101. Yep. It's just a fact. So if you're gonna contextualize the vision, if you're gonna change the vision, you need to understand you're gonna face some pretty healthy criticism. You might even say, get nailed to a cross.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

That happened to one guy, right? But if you can show people urgency, iceberg ahead. I guarantee you they tried to turn that Titanic. They didn't get it done, but I guarantee you they tried really hard to turn the Titanic fast. So if the organization's been up and to the right forever and you're doing a succession, when we do succession planning, we we look at what's the growth trajectory. If it's been great, man, you're not really looking for a brand new thing. Yeah. You're probably looking for a younger software update of the same operating system, right? But if it's been going down, down, down, well, a change might be the only thing to break the S curve. Yep. Right. If it's been flat, that's the hardest one. Because people don't know how stagnant things have been. And it requires a massive shakeup. And you're probably going to be, I mean, we say when in uh the book we wrote called Next, we say it started with the very first line every pastor is an interim pastor. It's all interim work, right? Yeah. Until until Jesus returns, it's all interim work. But if you're going to change things very quickly in a large organization that's not tanking, uh you're going to be a very interim pastor.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So wise. Well, here's what I know is that vision, if you repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, and can be understood and repeated back to you in all layers of leadership.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Thanks again for joining us on the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're looking for more leadership resources, you can find us at Vanderblumen.com and on socials at Vanderblumen. We'll see you again next week where we continue discussing how to build, run, and keep great teams.