Daydream or Nightmare? Leading with Vision and Action in the C-Suite

Alex and Tom Lemanski discuss the critical balance between having a compelling vision and taking decisive action, and how leaders often lean too heavily on one while neglecting the other. Listeners will learn how to diagnose whether their organization is suffering from stagnation or chaos, and how to take immediate, practical steps to lead with both vision and action.

Tom Lemanski is an executive coach and leadership advisor at Chicago Executive Coaching. If this conversation sparked something for you, visit https://chicagoexecutivecoaching.com to learn more or get in touch.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:04

Welcome to Leadership Breakthroughs, where executive coaches and leaders explore the mindsets and strategies that drive real growth. I'm your host, Alex, and today we're talking about something that sounds simple, but trips up leaders at every level. The balance between vision and action, and what happens when you're running short on one of them. I'm joined by Tom Lemanski, founder of Chicago Executive Coaching. Tom, welcome.

Speaker 0:27

Good to be here, Alex.

Speaker 1 0:29

Tom, you write about this idea that vision without action leads to stagnation, and action without vision leads to chaos. I want to start there. Because on the surface, most leaders would say, yeah, obviously I need both. So why is this still such a common problem?

Speaker 0:46

Because knowing you need both and actually having both are two completely different things. Most leaders have a natural lean, they're either oriented toward big picture thinking or toward execution. That preference doesn't disappear just because you understand the concept intellectually. And the tricky part is that both failure modes feel productive from the inside. The visionary feels like they're doing important work. The executor feels like they're getting things done. Neither one necessarily sees what's missing.

Speaker 1 1:14

So the stagnation and the chaos, those are the symptoms. But a leader might not recognize which one they're living in.

Speaker 1:20

That's exactly right. Stagnation is sneaky because the organization is usually busy. People are active, meetings are happening, reports are being filed, but nothing meaningful is changing. There's no direction pulling everyone forward. Chaos is the opposite problem. There's plenty of motion, plenty of urgency, but it's not coordinated around anything that matters. Both feel like work. Neither one produces real results.

Speaker 1 1:44

You use Microsoft and GE in the 80s as examples of companies that got this right. What was actually happening there?

Speaker 1:51

What those companies figured out, at least in that era, was that you could pair a visionary thinker with a methodical executor and let each one do what they do best. You had the dreamer setting the direction and the doer making sure it actually happened. The point isn't that those specific companies are the model for everyone. The point is the dynamic. When those two orientations are working together, you get something neither one could produce alone. You get a destination and a way to get there.

Speaker 1 2:23

You call it a C-suite tag team, but most leaders aren't running Microsoft. They don't have a partner to hand off to.

Speaker 2:29

Right, and that's the more common situation. Most leaders, especially at the senior director or VP level, sometimes even at the C-suite level in smaller organizations, have to wear both hats. They have to be the one who sets the vision and the one who drives execution. That's a real cognitive and behavioral stretch. It's not impossible, but you have to be deliberate about it.

Speaker 1 2:51

What does deliberate look like? Because I can imagine someone saying, sure, I'll be both, and then just defaulting back to whichever one comes naturally.

Speaker 3:00

That's exactly what happens. The first step is honest self-diagnosis. You have to ask yourself which failure mode you're more likely to fall into. Are you the person who loves the big idea but struggles to follow through? Or are you the person who executes brilliantly but hasn't stopped to ask whether you're executing toward the right destination? Most people know the answer if they're honest with themselves. The problem is they don't ask the question.

Speaker 1 3:26

And once you've diagnosed it, then what?

Speaker 3:30

Then you compensate deliberately. If you tend toward vision, you build structure around your execution, specific milestones, accountability, someone on your team whose job is to push back when the plan isn't moving. If you tend toward execution, you carve out protected time to think strategically. And I mean actually protected, not I'll get to it when things calm down because things never calm down. You have to create the conditions for the thinking that doesn't come naturally to you.

Speaker 1 3:58

I want to push on the vision side for a second, because I think there's a version of vision that's just aspirational language that doesn't actually mean anything. We want to be the best in our industry? Okay, that's not a vision, that's a poster.

Speaker 4:12

You're right, and that's a real trap. A vision that doesn't change behavior isn't a vision, it's decoration. A useful vision answers a specific question. Where are we going and why does it matter? It has to be concrete enough that someone on your team can look at a decision they're facing and ask, does this get us closer to where we said we were going? If the vision can't help answer that question, it's not doing its job.

Speaker 1 4:37

So it's a decision-making filter, not just a statement.

Speaker 4:40

That's a good way to put it. The vision should be making decisions easier, not just inspiring people in a meeting. If it's only alive in a slide deck, it's a daydream. If it's actually shaping how people prioritize their time and resources, it's doing real work.

Speaker 1 4:55

Let's flip to the action side. What does action without vision actually look like in practice? What are you seeing when a leader is stuck in that mode?

Speaker 5:03

The clearest signal is when an organization is very good at solving problems that shouldn't exist. Everyone is sharp, everyone is responsive, there's a genuine culture of getting things done, but they're constantly reacting. They're fixing things, managing crises, handling the urgent. And if you ask, what are we building toward? the answer is vague or inconsistent, depending on who you ask. That's the action without vision pattern. It produces exhaustion more than progress.

Speaker 1 5:30

That's a sobering picture because from the outside, that organization looks functional.

Speaker 5:35

It does, and that's what makes it hard to fix. The leader who's driving all that activity usually has strong credibility. They're solving real problems. But they're not leading toward anything. At some point, the people around them start to feel the absence of direction, even if they can't name it. Good people start to leave because they want to be part of something, not just busy.

Speaker 1 5:56

So the cost shows up in retention before it shows up in results.

Speaker 6:00

Often, yes, the talent reads the room before the numbers do.

Speaker 1 6:03

Tom, if someone is listening to this and they're the person who has to wear both hats, the dreamer and the doer, what's the one place they should start?

Speaker 6:12

Start with an honest answer to one question. Right now, is your organization experiencing stagnation or chaos? Not both. Pick one, the one that's more true. If it's stagnation, your next move is clarity. Get the vision off the whiteboard and into a form your team can actually use to make decisions. If it's chaos, your next move is pause. Stop. Identify the two or three things that actually matter most and let the rest wait. The diagnosis tells you which hat to put on first. Most leaders skip the diagnosis and go straight to more activity, which usually just makes whichever problem they have worse.

Speaker 1 6:46

Tom, if someone's listening to this on their commute and wants to try one thing this week, what would you tell them?

Speaker 6:53

Pick one honest question and answer it before Friday. Ask yourself, does my team know in specific terms where we are headed? And could they explain it to someone else without looking at a slide? If the answer is no, that's your first job. Write down the destination in two or three sentences that are concrete enough to help someone make a real decision. Then check whether your calendar last week actually reflected that direction or whether you spent the week reacting to everything else. That gap between where you say you're going and where your time actually went is where most leadership problems live. Close that gap and you've started leading with both vision and action.

Speaker 1 7:29

That's leadership breakthroughs. Thanks to Tom Lemanski for a conversation that cuts through the easy answer and gets to what's actually hard about this. You can find Tom's Leadership Breakthroughs blog and coaching programs at chicagoexecutive coaching.com. We'll be back next week.