Vision doesn’t stick without constant care and attention.
The three primary obstacles to making vision stick are success, failure, and everything in between. There is no season in which a leader can push autopilot and expect the organization to remain vision-driven.
Vision is about what could be and should be, but life is about right this minute.
When it comes to making your vision stick, here is the most important thing to remember: You are responsible. It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure that people understand and embrace the vision of the organization.
If the people around us don’t know where we are going, it’s because we haven’t made it clear.
For your vision to stick, you may need to clarify or simplify it.
To make vision stick, it needs to be easy to communicate.
To cast a convincing vision, you have to define the problem that your vision addresses. Every vision is a solution to a problem.
Make your vision stick, your audience needs to understand what’s at stake. It’s the “what’s at stake” issue that grabs people’s hearts.
Buy-in by others hinges on your ability to convince them that you are offering a solution to a problem they are convinced needs to be solved.
To cast your vision in a convincing manner, you need to be able to answer these two questions: What is the need or problem my vision addresses? What will happen if those needs or problems continue to go unaddressed?
A leader points the way to a solution and gives a compelling reason why something must be done now.
If you haven’t defined the problem, determined a solution, and discovered a compelling reason why now is the time to act, you aren’t ready to go public with your vision. It won’t stick.
Vision needs to be repeated regularly. To make it stick, you need to find ways to build vision casting into the rhythm of your organization.
At some point you will need to determine the optimal times and contexts for vision casting in your organization. Look for ways to build it into your natural business or ministry cycle, into the rhythm of your organization.
To make vision stick, a leader needs to pause long enough to celebrate the wins along the way. Celebrating the wins does more to clarify the vision than anything else.
When you celebrate the right things, you are using the most effective form of vision casting.
What’s celebrated is repeated. The behaviors that are celebrated are repeated. The decisions that are celebrated are repeated. The values that are celebrated are repeated. If you intentionally or unintentionally celebrate something that is in conflict with your vision, the vision won’t stick.
Your willingness to embody the vision of your organization will have a direct impact on your credibility as a leader. Living out the vision establishes credibility and makes you a leader worth following.
Leaders must keep their antennae up for new things that have the potential to distract from the main thing. New projects, programs, or even products must be vision-centric.
As a leader, you need to do the due diligence necessary to keep distracting elements out of the organization.
Vision, not people’s random ideas, should determine programming. Vision, not a cool PowerPoint presentation, should determine which new initiatives are funded by your organization. Vision, not the promise of great returns, should determine which products are launched.
Every leader should identify gauges that measure the alignment between the organization’s activity and its vision.
Making your vision stick requires bold leadership. It will require you to develop a healthy intolerance for those things that have the potential to impede your progress.
Seeing a vision become a reality requires more than a single burst of energy or creativity. It requires daily attention. Daily commitment.
