I think we need to be more nuanced when we talk about this idea of whether a vision is good or bad. And we need to be specific about context.
I believe it's the combination of elements you talk about that make the approach problematic. Not having a vision per se.
The problem with a corporate vision is that they are often just "a goal". It's one line that is really what we want to do.
A vision can also be a social narrative. It's directional and (how I approach it) less of a goal that should be back cast (although I recognise how some foresight practitioners use backcasting - which again is useful in a complicated problem domain).
I see the use of a vision as more aligned to Boyds notion of 'Purpose'. For me it's about creating something more aligned to commanders intent at a grander scale.
We wouldn't have landed on the moon, have a civil rights movement or see the rebirth of Te Reo Māori (The Māori language) in New Zealand without aspirational visions of the future.
How visions are created and executed in a corporate landscape is one thing.
It doesn't mean all 'visions' and 'visioning' should be tarred with the same brush.
Thanks Chris, I appreciate the comment and the challenge. I don’t think I say “no visions!” and I tried to include nuance by saying:
“There are other ways to strategise that don’t require you to define a vision upfront. And I want you to have those in your strategic tool belt too. Because if you rely on vision-based strategy when it’s not appropriate ...”
I agree that visions and visioning can have positive results and can be the best approach in some situations.
But the balance in the businesses I’ve experienced over the past decade has been tipped heavily towards vision as “the only way”. When I’ve talked with people about relaxing the obsession with visions, some are confused about what anyone could possibly do instead. And I’ve seen even cautious, caveated visions that were painstakingly trying to avoid the traps _still_ trip some people up, even as they’re also creating some good effects.
I’m not saying all visions are bad, only that there are trade offs you can’t simply avoid.
I hear what you're saying. I may have been guilty over skimming over some parts on the first read.
On the re-read, maybe some of the nuance is lost in the stronger messaging?
It could just be me who's also very familiar with a lot of what you're talking an out. I do find the anti-vision perspective quite triggering as I do see a lack of middle-ground at the moment. :D
We had a similar situation to your story with a client a while back, which I can't really go into publicly.
Maybe we should create a board game called "Corporate Darwinism"?
But yeah, finding the right balance of strong perspective and nuance is a fiddly thing to deal with when writing this series. I know there are many people who literally cannot imagine a visionless alternative and I want something strong enough to say "look, it's possible and you'll be ok!" ... and I fear that hedging and splitting the difference ("it's ok, you can have your big vision and also avoid the downsides!") is just not true and is the worst way to go. I'm aiming more barbell.
That said, something I'll be going into in future episodes:
I'm not really saying "don't have any visions" because humans are just going to have visions anyway. A bit like "don't make up stories about why things are happening" fails, because your brain just does it anyway.
Instead, I'm saying "don't try to have a singular vision unless it's a very modest one.". The time/energy to align around a singular vision, and the costs of having a singular vision almost always outweigh the time/energy saved and its benefits. The exception is a modest vision, the kind where it's bloody obvious to pretty much everyone involved that you *should* do something, and you know exactly what it's going to take and what it'll look like when you're there – it just needs you to allocate some effort.
If you can't _not_ have visions but you also don't want to have a singular vision, then you need ways to hold multiple visions in mind. I've seen a few people start to describe these clouds of distinct-but-coherent visions as an aspiration. Another option becomes describing multiple anti-visions: where do we really NOT want to go?
And the game becomes: what small things can we do today to make all the distinct-but-coherent visions slightly more likely (and the anti-visions less likely)? ... and how can we allow that journey and those stepping stones to enable different visions and anti-visions as we learn more?
More to come. But yeah: I'm not surprised you had a similar situation to the story I shared. I think it's outrageously common.
I love how you convey the overall idea of the Vision Chasm through a real-life story. And that you also show how we use **story** both to 'predict' the future (hopefully, yet hopelessly, through the vision) _and_ to 'explain' the past (through retrospective coherence). And you do it all in a story! Very meta but very compelling :)
The whole idea of vision/mission/goals really needs unpicking and I look forward to the rest of your article series. I think Peter Compo's Emergent Approach to Strategy can add nuance to that discussion. On the one hand, he does talk about 'aspirations', which can figure as vision/mission/goals in a strategic plan. But on the other hand the strategy emerges. Although he does 'work backwards' as you say, he focuses on the bottleneck, which is then 'busted' by a strategy (strategy←bottleneck←aspiration).
How would that look? To use your story, the first **aspiration** would have been 'We need to find our next S-curve'. The **bottleneck** is 'we don't know what the next S-curve should be'. The **strategy** is 'talk to real customers and explore many small ideas'.
One idea then emerges as one that seems to get traction. Now the **aspiration** is: 'Create a working product quickly that real customers will pay for today'. **Bottlenecks** include: 'We don't have time/money to design for pretty'. **Strategies**: 'Create the skeleton with a basic useful spreadsheet' and 'Update manually (Mechanical Turk style) before automated'. And so on.
Obviously, I'm now guilty of 'retrospective coherence'. Would the team really have chosen that first aspiration, or picked the bigger 'vision'? Would they have updated the strategy to the second aspiration and sought the new bottleneck?
I hope to explore some of these ideas with you on my podcast soon as it feels like you and Peter Compo are rowing in the same direction. Meanwhile, looking forward to the next article.
Love it Tom! Look forward to the future posts
Love this one Tom
Thanks so much Dave!
Hey Tom,
I think we need to be more nuanced when we talk about this idea of whether a vision is good or bad. And we need to be specific about context.
I believe it's the combination of elements you talk about that make the approach problematic. Not having a vision per se.
The problem with a corporate vision is that they are often just "a goal". It's one line that is really what we want to do.
A vision can also be a social narrative. It's directional and (how I approach it) less of a goal that should be back cast (although I recognise how some foresight practitioners use backcasting - which again is useful in a complicated problem domain).
I see the use of a vision as more aligned to Boyds notion of 'Purpose'. For me it's about creating something more aligned to commanders intent at a grander scale.
We wouldn't have landed on the moon, have a civil rights movement or see the rebirth of Te Reo Māori (The Māori language) in New Zealand without aspirational visions of the future.
How visions are created and executed in a corporate landscape is one thing.
It doesn't mean all 'visions' and 'visioning' should be tarred with the same brush.
With love as always :)
Thanks Chris, I appreciate the comment and the challenge. I don’t think I say “no visions!” and I tried to include nuance by saying:
“There are other ways to strategise that don’t require you to define a vision upfront. And I want you to have those in your strategic tool belt too. Because if you rely on vision-based strategy when it’s not appropriate ...”
I agree that visions and visioning can have positive results and can be the best approach in some situations.
But the balance in the businesses I’ve experienced over the past decade has been tipped heavily towards vision as “the only way”. When I’ve talked with people about relaxing the obsession with visions, some are confused about what anyone could possibly do instead. And I’ve seen even cautious, caveated visions that were painstakingly trying to avoid the traps _still_ trip some people up, even as they’re also creating some good effects.
I’m not saying all visions are bad, only that there are trade offs you can’t simply avoid.
I hear what you're saying. I may have been guilty over skimming over some parts on the first read.
On the re-read, maybe some of the nuance is lost in the stronger messaging?
It could just be me who's also very familiar with a lot of what you're talking an out. I do find the anti-vision perspective quite triggering as I do see a lack of middle-ground at the moment. :D
We had a similar situation to your story with a client a while back, which I can't really go into publicly.
Maybe we should create a board game called "Corporate Darwinism"?
:D
I'm all in on that board game!
But yeah, finding the right balance of strong perspective and nuance is a fiddly thing to deal with when writing this series. I know there are many people who literally cannot imagine a visionless alternative and I want something strong enough to say "look, it's possible and you'll be ok!" ... and I fear that hedging and splitting the difference ("it's ok, you can have your big vision and also avoid the downsides!") is just not true and is the worst way to go. I'm aiming more barbell.
That said, something I'll be going into in future episodes:
I'm not really saying "don't have any visions" because humans are just going to have visions anyway. A bit like "don't make up stories about why things are happening" fails, because your brain just does it anyway.
Instead, I'm saying "don't try to have a singular vision unless it's a very modest one.". The time/energy to align around a singular vision, and the costs of having a singular vision almost always outweigh the time/energy saved and its benefits. The exception is a modest vision, the kind where it's bloody obvious to pretty much everyone involved that you *should* do something, and you know exactly what it's going to take and what it'll look like when you're there – it just needs you to allocate some effort.
If you can't _not_ have visions but you also don't want to have a singular vision, then you need ways to hold multiple visions in mind. I've seen a few people start to describe these clouds of distinct-but-coherent visions as an aspiration. Another option becomes describing multiple anti-visions: where do we really NOT want to go?
And the game becomes: what small things can we do today to make all the distinct-but-coherent visions slightly more likely (and the anti-visions less likely)? ... and how can we allow that journey and those stepping stones to enable different visions and anti-visions as we learn more?
More to come. But yeah: I'm not surprised you had a similar situation to the story I shared. I think it's outrageously common.
Thanks for your long and considered comment Tom.
I get it 100% with writing. You need to put for ward strong points and arguments otherwise it's not compelling enough to read.
And it's good to be polarising as it gets people commenting!
:D
It's funny you talk of 'anti-visions'. I was thinking of them as antonyms just yesterday.
Maybe our paths will cross physically at some point and we'll be bale to have these discussions in-person!
I love how you convey the overall idea of the Vision Chasm through a real-life story. And that you also show how we use **story** both to 'predict' the future (hopefully, yet hopelessly, through the vision) _and_ to 'explain' the past (through retrospective coherence). And you do it all in a story! Very meta but very compelling :)
The whole idea of vision/mission/goals really needs unpicking and I look forward to the rest of your article series. I think Peter Compo's Emergent Approach to Strategy can add nuance to that discussion. On the one hand, he does talk about 'aspirations', which can figure as vision/mission/goals in a strategic plan. But on the other hand the strategy emerges. Although he does 'work backwards' as you say, he focuses on the bottleneck, which is then 'busted' by a strategy (strategy←bottleneck←aspiration).
How would that look? To use your story, the first **aspiration** would have been 'We need to find our next S-curve'. The **bottleneck** is 'we don't know what the next S-curve should be'. The **strategy** is 'talk to real customers and explore many small ideas'.
One idea then emerges as one that seems to get traction. Now the **aspiration** is: 'Create a working product quickly that real customers will pay for today'. **Bottlenecks** include: 'We don't have time/money to design for pretty'. **Strategies**: 'Create the skeleton with a basic useful spreadsheet' and 'Update manually (Mechanical Turk style) before automated'. And so on.
Obviously, I'm now guilty of 'retrospective coherence'. Would the team really have chosen that first aspiration, or picked the bigger 'vision'? Would they have updated the strategy to the second aspiration and sought the new bottleneck?
I hope to explore some of these ideas with you on my podcast soon as it feels like you and Peter Compo are rowing in the same direction. Meanwhile, looking forward to the next article.