Why your company’s future vision isn’t progressing
In this article – how the failures to properly deploy a long-term vision occur and what needs to happen to ensure a bold roadmap to your desired future.
Business organizations that achieve lasting success are adept at a regular process of crafting and molding their future. Where are we going? Who are our customers? How will we get there? What is needed? Where do we start? How do we manage the “Journey” (an overused platitude term, yes).
To properly engage a viable (or even bold) vision for the future, we must look at why they fail to yield any significant changes in performance.
Fail Reason # 1 – Visions will fail when they do not exist. Sounds silly but most organizations have little or no grasp of where they want to go to stay competitive, keep up with market trends, stave off competition and simply survive. To assume yesterday’s success equals perennial performance is a recipe for failure. Kmart, Blockbuster, Kodak, Toys R Us being a few notable examples. Firms such as these typically will try “Bolt-On Tactics” to turnaround downward spirals in performance such as cost-cutting, reorganizations, etc. as a counter to the failure to establish bold, innovative, even “BlueSky” visions for the future.
Fix #1 – Establish a long-term vision for the future that goes beyond slogans and lobby posters and begins to answer the questions posed in the opening paragraph above. In effect, we seek the “View from 10,000 feet”.
This answers the question “Where are we trying to go overall?”
Example: Google’s core vision “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, the tech giant has evolved from a basic web indexer into an absolute leader in consumer search.
Example: Patagonia has built their vision “To save our home planet”, the outdoor apparel icon historically restructured its corporate ownership so that 100% of its profits are funneled directly to combating climate change and protecting wild lands.
There are few who would argue on the historical performance of these firms represent successive step-changes in goals, objectives, strategies to achieve the vision.
Fail Reason # 2 – Visions fail when they are not properly translated into a cohesive strategy that bridges the current state to the desired future-state. Countless visions can be seen with little to nothing behind them. A well known international food manufacturer once had a vision “Undisputed Industry Leadership By 1-1-2001”. Their products, services, business model arguably did not change to accommodate consumer shifts, and market share suffered at the hands of upstarts, boutique competitors and megatrends in health and nutrition.
Fix #2 – Upon a well-crafted vision for the future is built a roadmap to get there. Sounds simple right? Here is what this entails:
Breakdown the vision into specific attributes that are measurable, ie; where we will compete, how we will innovate, where our culture needs to be, the core competencies we need, how our business model, processes will need to change to reflect speed, efficiency without compromising quality.
Measure the future state vision specifics as compared to the current state realities. In effect “Where are we today against the various attributes?” This is the classical “Gap Analysis” that more visibly compares where we are versus where we want to go across the many pillars of organizational performance.
This answers the question “In what specific ways will we change?”
Fail Reason # 3 – Vision deployment is not treated as a priority business strategy with specific action plans, requisite milestones, timelines, and active review processes to monitor progress, course-correct and otherwise maintain forward momentum.
This is little different than the classical strategy failures overall – the need to have goals translated into specific strategies and plans and management systems to ensure dynamic engagement with accountability structures that go beyond monthly performance reviews.
Fix #3 – Elevate future vision progression to the level of a high-priority business strategy and ensure accountable engagement, proper resourcing of strategies and plans and the review processes that help ensure forward progress.
This answers the question “What needs to happen to get and keep the ball rolling?” towards envisioned change.
Take away or fail to engage any of these properly and your firm will likely suffer at the hands of more innovative, nimble, faster companies.
