More on Vision Statements, Alignment and Strategy

The last post discussed how Mr. Hassan, CEO of Schering-Plough, developed a powerful, compelling vision as a key foundation for his business turnaround, and how this vision served both to create the strong workforce alignment required for Disciplined Execution, and also for Creative Renewal. This post can be viewed in the blog entry entitled Creative Renewal: Schering-Plough's Turnaround.

As a reminder, or in case you haven’t read previous blog entries, to our way of thinking here at the Center for Corporate Renewal, we think that sustainable growth depends critically on three core competencies. A self-renewing company must be able to…

Think with STRATEGIC FOCUS: Make sense of a changing environment and gain focus on the next right strategic move
Act with DISCIPLINED EXECUTION: Align and mobilize the entire organization behind this new strategic focus
Lead with CREATIVE RENEWAL: Renew the entrepreneurial spirit, while enabling your organization to continually cycle through stronger and stronger strategy-to-execution phases

A strong, compelling vision can also serve as a key driver for Strategic Focus. In an earlier blog entry we discussed how, prior to Mr. Hassan’s ascendancy to CEO, the company had to a significant extent lost it’s way due to an entire laundry list of serious problems, most of which were of S-P’s own making. And while under the tremendous pressure of trying to put out all those fires, the company addressed them with a fire-fighter’s perspective: they just bounced around from crisis to crisis, from a tactical/ operational perspective: without any kind of coherent, over-arching, forward-looking framework in which to understand and “locate” their current woes, and also see beyond them to a genuinely new future.. As a result, the company became somewhat lost.

Anyway, when Mr. Hassan and his team wrestled with the future direction of the company, out of a great deal of friction and heat emerged a powerful, compelling vision for the future. And now to the point: this compelling vision provided a “guiding light” to help the company navigate successfully through the dark fog of tremendous uncertainty, strong competitive thrusts, and constant marketplace flux. That is, the company’s compelling vision helped the senior team to think with Strategic Focus, make sense out of a myriad of complex, constantly changing environmental signals, and to discern the appropriate course of action in alignment with the company’s long-term vision for the future.

A genuinely compelling and powerful vision has a kind of beauty about it. A vision that’s the real deal connotes something deeper, higher, and more meaningful than the usual vision statement. How? The run-of-the mill vision statement generally speaks to some form of “winning” (getting to the top of the heap) and to tremendous financial success. (By the way, both of those are great things.)

The problem is that such visions define the desired end-state solely in financial, operational, measurable terms. Such visions are strangely empty: they lack the emotional and spiritual resonance of visions that paint a vivid picture of the kind of company it intends to become! That is, they don’t paint a vivid picture of the “guts” of the company: its deep purpose, values, and the unique, authentic contribution it intends to make to its customers, and to the larger world.

Financially driven vision statements are generally written by senior management, and for senior and upper-middle management, financial goals are indeed the primary driving force of their lives. The problem, however, is that for the rank-and file employee, purely financial/ operational visions don’t generate sustainable motivation, passion and commitment. A ton of scholarly research bears this out. And the great body of employees are the folks who actually enact the vision – who make it happen.

If you want to capture and release the vast stores of passion, energy, commitment and drive to succeed in your entire workforce, you need a passionate, energetic, meaningful, contribution-oriented vision of the future. If it’s genuine, if it’s the real deal, people can genuinely rally around it and get behind it. If you have that kind of authentic vision, you won’t have to work so hard at trying to “enlist” them or get “buy-in”, both of which are generally thinly veiled sales efforts or compliance and control efforts.

Wow, I went on longer than I expected. I’ll move to a new subject next time.

Dean Robb, Ph.D.