- Summary of articles
- Leadership is creating a world to which people want to belong
- Do you really know your organisation's world?
- Managing as a creator of Worlds
- Create sales contacts through your breakfasts
- Mergers
- Create a dynamic vision, keystone of your Desired World
- Secrets of CEOs/salespeople out to conquer your Market World!
Create a dynamic vision, keystone of your Desired World
Rare are the companies that formalise their vision in an incisive, differentiated, meaningful, concise and motivating way.
4 paths to achieve this:
- define a territory,
- characterise the mission,
- specify differentiation,
- and determine the ambition.
A manager who does not know how to express clearly his company’s vision will not know how to unite his teams and give them the means to arbitrate on key strategic decisions.
What is a Vision? How do we build it?
The definition of a vision is based on simple ideas: conception of the future of the company, projection into the future, hypothesis that is strategic, analytical and affective. But this approach is not sufficiently operational and illustrates the difficulty in understanding this management tool. So, in Hispanic countries, the term "vision" is associated with a nightmare or apparition, which probably matches the perception of many managers, particularly when their vision is sent back like a boomerang by their colleagues!
Without tools, formulating a vision becomes sufficiently vague and sterile to guarantee the consensus of any management team. I had the opportunity to study and evaluate the vision of an international integrator of information systems. After many meetings and nitpicking debates, the managers arrived at a vision of which they were proud.
This is its content:
"We aspire to be number one in our market. We are dedicated to the success of our clients. We respect and listen to our employees. We do our utmost for the company to prosper and to satisfy our shareholders. ..."
Like me you will have noticed that this approach does not tell us anything, that any company can say the same thing and that this vision barely helps in the decision-making process around key strategic choices: a little strategy, a pinch of values, objectives, intentions and paradigms, etc.
On the contrary, the vision must be incisive, differentiated, meaningful, concise and motivating.
It is an art of extreme strategic synthesis.
The P-VAL approach in four complementary concepts is as follows:
Path 1: The “Territory” defines the company’s playing field.
Depending on the context, this can be the business, the yard in which you play, the competitive field. It is the base surrounding the field of the company’s actions, its key expertise. Thus Air France claims to be "The national airline".
Let’s take the case of GL Trade, a company of 800 staff, international with operations in London, Frankfurt, Singapore, Tokyo, New York, ... which has succeeded brilliantly in providing its clients (banks, brokers, intermediaries) with comprehensive solutions enabling them to make their stock market orders on electronic markets. GL Trade can thus claim the territory of not just financial electronic trading, but also other markets by extension.
Path 2: The "Mission" characterises the raison d'être of the company and its employees.
It is this that is in danger of disappearing if the company disappears. It is THE customer service.
Thus, Danone defines its mission as follows: "All over the World, help people grow, live better and flourish ...".
In all modesty, P-VAL Conseil will say that its role is to: "Make you the company of choice".
The GL Trade example affirms: "Provide universal and simple access to markets".
Path 3: "Differentiation" specifies what makes the company’s project stand out from the other players in the same territory.
This differentiation may focus on all elements of the company, but it often focuses on the modus operandi, on the liberties the company takes in relation to the rules of its sector.
Danone completes its mission with differentiation by methods: "by providing them every day with better food, more varied tastes, and healthier pleasures".
GL Trade emphasises its ability to provide "the best technological response". It asserts an original perception of what should help it win on these markets.
Path 4: The "Ambition" is the point you want to arrive at, the one that will characterise the success of your company in its own eyes.
The manager will then reason in terms of leadership, uniqueness, internationalisation, recognition by the market, etc. What does GL Trade say on this? “Become world leader” after becoming leader in France. In this instance, the ambition now achieved was possible and it was clearly THE strategic and organisational challenge.
In addition to the four paths that we have presented for giving birth to a strategic vision, the manager must develop an essential quality: he must learn the art of being a "visionary".
Our assignments on consultancy and strategic wording and our management seminars have convinced us that the art of putting together a vision can be taught. The manager must be brave. The vision is neither too brilliant rhetoric nor platitude: it must be easily understood by everyone. It requires choices: one cannot say everything, target everything. There’s no mileage in giving verbose presentations. The manager must communicate the vision through a number of levels in the company. He must make use of images, practical representations and not of figures that are often his means of expression and recognition.
The vision involves responsibilities.
The manager must be sure of the direction he is pointing in and do his utmost to arrive there. I have heard many managers who did not want to commit themselves and run the risk of being faced with the reality of their vision a few years down the line.
The vision requires more courage as it is a lot of hard work.
The manager must devote himself to personal strategic reflection, develop it, feed it, share it with his general staff, and communicate it effectively. The manager must use creativity, and get under people’s skin.
The manager must be humble: his vision is not perfect!
No painting is perfect: the closer you get, the more imperfections appear. Likewise with a vision: everyone can criticise it. What matters is that it points in a direction to follow and it communicates a desire to launch oneself on the path. This will probably not be the path you planned, there will be detours, unforeseen events, but at least all players will know where they are going. They will know how to focus their energies together, rather than each one going in a different direction.