Is your vision believable?
A vision statement is the basis for day-to-day decision-making. Great cultures and leadership teams assess any new work against their vision and question its alignment. If the initiative or project doesn’t contribute to the achievement of the vision, then they don’t do it.
Netflix has achieved unprecedented success over the past 10-15 years and their vision has changed multiple times to reflect this. Their vision today is ‘We aspire to entertain the world’. It’s short, memorable and their employees believe it. It sparks inspiration, motivation and everything that they do is aligned with the achievement of this.
(Except maybe the show Buying London, which was rubbish.)
What Netflix and other great organisations recognise is that in order for staff to have belief in the vision, it has to be believable in order to be achievable. Only then does it become easy to bring to life, every single day, through the decisions that managers make.
Without believability it is just a statement, seemingly conjured up in a boardroom to satisfy the need to tick a culture box. It becomes performative in a way that values do when they aren’t actively demonstrated from the top.
When done well a vision is a catalyst for motivation, momentum and success.
Does your vision spark inspiration towards achievement or drain the belief from those that read it?
