Defining the organizational vision

- Another element of setting direction for your organization is articulating a vision. A vision should provide a clear picture of where you want to be as an organization in three to five years. Why three to five years? Anything less than three ends up being too tactical and people don't focus on generating big ideas. Anything further out than five years, there's too much ambiguity in the market. It's hard to see that far into the future because the world can change so much. So, defining what your organization is going to look like three to five years from now can provide a very clear target for people to shoot for. When you build your vision statement, first, articulate what value your organization creates. Let people know here's why we exist and here's how our customers benefit. Your vision should be ambitious but realistic. Ambitious because it'll push the organization to innovate and be aggressive and push hard. However, you need to make sure it's realistic so they don't look at it from day one and just give up. That vision needs to be something worth doing, to win people's commitment. You want your team excited about delivering on that, on getting to that destination. When you articulate the vision, try to figure out how you're differentiated from your competitors. And lastly, make sure that vision statement is concise, a few critical words. All of these are big ideas, but they clearly scope here's what we do, here's the market we do it in, and here's how we're different from our competitors. And the entire organization knows what they're working toward. So, when you articulate your vision, think three to five years out and put something aggressive out there that people can be excited about.