Vision means getting everyone in the organization 100% on the same page with where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.
It is common to hear people say their organization lacks vision. That usually isn’t true. In fact, most businesses have the opposite problem: too much vision. That’s because everyone has their own. People come to work every day with their own agendas and their own ideas of where the company should be tomorrow. In reality, the company is suffering from too many competing visions.
In most cases, the company that has a “lack of vision” is really suffering from a lack of alignment. Because if the Leadership Team isn’t aligned on where the organization is going, it is impossible for the rank & file to have a clue.
Many companies try to solve this issue by creating inspiring, complex visions. That actually only makes the problem worse, because it is hard to align people around complicated ideas. It is much easier to simplify, and come to agreement around basic questions like these:
- What are your Core Values?
- What is your Core Focus?
- What is your 10-year target?
- What is your (high level) marketing strategy?
- What is your 3-year picture?
- What is your 1-year plan?
- What are your Rocks (quarterly priorities)?
- What are the issues getting in the way of achieving all of this?
In reality, most members of the Leadership Team could quickly answer these 8 simple questions. The problem is that those answers will all be different. EOS drives alignment by enabling the Leadership Team to agree to one right answer to each of those eight questions. Because only when the Leadership Team is aligned is the rest of the organization able to follow.