A Clearly Defined Vision Can Transform Your Business

Vision is a powerful picture of the future which creates an ideal and unique image of what your organization will become or achieve. It provides the reason for the organization’s existence. It defines the organization’s reason WHY and is the “North Star” that every action in the organization is guided by.

Defining the vision for your business is also step 1 in my new free Ebook “12 Steps to Business Transformation.”

This is arguably the most important step in any business. Without it, there is no apparent reason for the business to exist and nothing for the employees or staff to rally around.

12 Steps to Business Transformation

12 Steps to Business Transformation is founded on a simple business model and describes the 12 steps required to implement and execute on the model. The whole model is summarized in the Thinking Business Blueprint shown below.

And, as mentioned above, the first step in the Blueprint is to define your Vision.

I have written about what organizational Vision is, why it is critical for your success, who is responsible for it, how you define it, how you communicate it and the importance of a Vision statement in the following articles:

• What is Your Company’s Vision and Why Should You Care
• Did Your Organization’s Vision Leak
• How Do Leaders Get Their Organizations from Vision to Action
• How to Craft a Vision Statement

Go ahead and review these to get a solid understanding of the Vision statement.

Business Results Prove Vision Statement Effectiveness

I have seen the effectiveness of a powerful Vision statement in action but I have been challenged many times by business owners to show some statistical data proving the importance of the Vision statement. So, I located a couple of great studies that I have summarized below.

1. According to an article in Forbes by Joseph Folkman, employees who don’t know their company’s Vision statement or don’t find it meaningful are only engaged at work 16% of the time (this means 84% of the employees in these companies are disengaged!) For businesses where employees do find the Vision statement meaningful, employees are 68% engaged. This is a HUGE difference! A properly defined and communicated Vision statement can result in a 52% higher employee engagement rate! Engaged employees mean that your organization will be more productive, efficient, and profitable!

2. Further to this article, Strategy and Business published “What Drives a Company’s Success” where their research showed that companies that have clarity of identity (common Vision on who they are and where they are going) have three-year total shareholder return growth rates over 3% higher than their competitors! The top five examples of businesses with the clearest identity they studied are:
   • Apple
   • BMW
   • Caterpillar
   • Coca-Cola
   • Honda

How would you like to outperform your competitors by 3% each and every year? Imagine the market share you can gain with 3% annual compounding market share growth! All with a simple tweak . . . Getting alignment around a common Vision!

In Summary

It seems the evidence is overwhelming. A properly defined and communicated Vision statement has a huge impact on your business and positions you for success in the marketplace!

Go ahead and download the 12 Steps to Business Transformation Ebook for free or in Kindle format from Amazon. Spend some time this week reading it and then complete step one by defining the Vision for your business and begin communicating this throughout your organization.

“If we don’t know who we are or where we’re going, how can we possibly know exactly what we should do today, and tomorrow?  Vision is fundamental for ethical success . . .With a powerful ethical vision directing all our other thoughts, we don’t need long lists of rules to guide us.” Tom Morris

Leave a comment below on what your organization’s Vision is or the impact it has made in your organization.

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Download a free copy of my new Ebook: 12 Steps to Business Transformation