Many companies don’t communicate their vision to employees, and this leaves the entire organization wondering, “Where are we going?” If your employees don’t know where you’re going, how can they help you get there?
In fact, many employees don’t even know what a company vision is. A company’s Vision, simply put, is a matter of defining:
- Who you are
- Where you’re going
- How you’ll get there
MAKE SURE YOUR VISION IS DOCUMENTED
Great companies have leaders who communicate a crystal-clear vision to the entire company.
Every company has a vision, but it might not be written down or shared with everyone. Perhaps only a few leaders carry it around in their heads. Perhaps only the owner has the vision but hasn’t shared it with everyone. Or worse, the leadership team thinks they all agree on the vision and they really don’t. When the leadership team isn’t on the same page with the company’s vision, they and the company will end up rowing in different directions.
As an example, the leadership team members of a New England telecom firm were asked to write down the company’s top priorities for the next year. Not a single answer was the same. One person thought that sales were the top priority while another thought it was hiring additional operations people. Yet another manager thought it was opening an office on the West Coast. Clearly, they were rowing in different directions and communicating different priorities to the employees
Best Practice – Build your vision as a leadership team and document it concisely
Building a company vision as a team effort isn’t easy. It may take an off-site meeting for a week, or a series of meetings over a 3-month period. Everyone on the leadership team needs to “own it.” It’s beyond buy-in, they need to believe in it with their all-out passion. It needs to be what drives the team forward cohesively.
MAKE SURE YOUR VISION IS SHARED
When your vision is clear, concise and documented, it’s important to share it with your employees. How are you ever going to achieve the vision if your people don’t know where your firm is headed? If you don’t have a written vision that is shared with everyone and owned by everyone in the company, you’ll inevitably have more miscommunication, greater confusion, and wasted effort.
Sharing your vision doesn’t mean handing it out on a piece of paper in an all-hands meeting! How does that achieve buy-in? If it took a heavy time commitment to develop, the only way to do justice in sharing it with your employees is to dedicate a like time commitment.
Best Practice – Raise the vision often with employees by sharing stories about its development
Consider, if you share the vision in a single meeting or discussion with your employees, are they likely to really get it? Bringing your vision to life means injecting it in a variety of conversations, meetings, one-to-ones, and so forth. Where the vision seems pertinent to a topic being discussed, reference the vision. It will help employees realize how the vision applies to everyday situations and challenges around the workplace. It makes the vision real. Remember, if you participated in developing the vision, chances are you know it inside and out, you hashed out what should be included and why with your colleagues. By giving your employees an equal chance to understand the vision and how it applies directly to their roles, you’ll create ownership and buy-in to the vision up-and-down the organization.
MAKE SURE YOUR VISION IS ACHIEVED
Visions, by their very nature, are big enough that no single individual can achieve it, or likely even one aspect of it. Most often, achieving a vision takes a village, people from different groups, functions and departments coming together to attack a certain aspect of it.
Achieving a vision means asking employees for ideas they have about it. It also means allowing those employees to implement their ideas. You don’t have to bet the company on an idea; instead, encourage employees who are particularly passionate about an idea to pilot it on a small scale, where risk is minimal. That could involve one customer, one operation, or some other controlled environment.
Small-scale pilots are proven to generate energy around your company. People see changes around them, they see new things being tried. They see small teams of people working to try something. This begins a snowball effect, where those who are often hesitant to share ideas begin doing so because they believe they will be heard. They believe they are allowed to suggest and implement changes.
