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Strategic Vision Exercise for Leaders

Leading at Light Speed is a new leadership book by Eric Douglas detailing the 10 Quantum Leaps to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization. Chapter 2 is all about Sharpening the Strategic Focus.

Here’s an exercise that I’ve found helps people think about vision: “Cast yourself forward three years (or whatever your planning horizon). Perhaps you can imagine relaxing at home, 3 years in the future, while contentedly reading an article about our company. The article talks about the remarkable success our organization has achieved. Imagine the headline and the story that accompanies the headline.

“Try and write the headline and the story as you see it in your own words. In the story, describe what were the most important decisions that propelled the company to this success. Who made these decisions? What specific things did the company do? Talk about what conflicts it had to resolve along the way.”

When people are ready, ask them to share their headlines and stories. Then ask people to share their emotional reactions: “Which stories excite you?” Second, ask them to think analytically: “What are the rationales for each vision? What can we expect our customers to value? What’s the benefit to the company?” Keep asking those questions and eliciting responses until people gravitate toward a well-defined vision.

Effective leaders who want to generate lasting, sustained success in their organizations need to spend a considerable amount of time and energy clarifying and communicating the strategic focus of the organization. This is the first step in building the levels of trust needed to enable people to act nimbly and quickly in the face of accelerating complexity and change.

When you assess the core values of an organization, you become more in tune with the needs and wants of your customers, shareholders, and employees, therefore ensuring success. This can be true for small companies as well as large companies, also for non-profit and public organizations. When core values are effectively communicated, everyone can begin to see eye-to-eye and generally seek to produce similar results. This will sharpen the focus and enable people to make the correct decisions more consistently.

It is critical to create common values among team members in order to encourage the development of trust. Trust is critical and will allow the manager more freedom when evaluating decisions. In a values-driven organization, managers can delegate decisions and ask people to think for themselves. When people act on the basis of clearly understood values – linked to performance measures – they are naturally engaged in making the right decisions consistently over time.

Aligning people around core values is the first thing that a leader should do. Doing this ensures that an organization will progress steadily.

Is your organization implementing the practices of high performing organizations? Find out with this free work survey.

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