Do you have a clear, concise and inspiring Vision for your company? Do you use it daily or at least weekly?
Your Vision is foundational to everything else you do. 
The Vision serves the organization by being a useful tool that brings about cohesion and inspires those who would buy from, work with and partner with you.
The Vision is meant to be used as a tool. It should be your company’s “North Star” and the 1st question you ask when presented with a new opportunity or offering, “Does this align with our Vision?”. If your Vision is unclear, uninspiring or changes frequently, how can it serve this purpose?
Compare the 3 Visions
- To create consistent growth through perfection in quality and excellence in innovation, magnifying the leadership to be the No. 1 company in the world – Amal Plywood
- Solving unsolved problems innovatively – 3M’s Core Purpose
- 2015: To be a market leading Fortune 500 company through growth and performance excellence. – Harland Clarke 2017: To be the premier, trusted partner for maximizing success
Which inspires? Not inspires you, but their ideal customer and their ideal employee, partner & investor.
Do any of them tell what the company does, or even hint at it?
From reading these, what problem are they solving to make the world a better place? When you solve a problem that makes the world better, people will pay for that solution, people will join that cause.
Do any of these make you more likely to buy from that company?
Note: 3M recently removed their Core Purpose from their About Us page. I wrote them asking why.
Quick Exercise:
Amal Plywood:
- Can you find their vision on the page? Does it inspire?
- Their vision changed since 2015. The 2015 version is referenced above.
- Is it a good thing to bechanging Visions?
- Is their new vision an improvement?
Harland Clarke:
- They also changed their Vision between 2015 & 2017.
- Is the new one an improvement?
- Does it provide any clarity around the problem they are solving in the world?
This is part of the Vision training we’re doing here at SturdyMcKee.com. We exist to help business owners succeed by growing and scaling their businesses while keeping their sanity and relationships intact. If you want help with your Vision, we’re here to help.
This post also appears on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-vision-sturdy-mckee.
Photo Credit: By Tiago Fioreze – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6111892