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A good vision makes direction concrete enough to guide strategy and shows why today’s choices matter in getting there. Slogans, five-year revenue targets and promises to single-handedly solve a global problem fall short of that job.
Vision is a strategic story
Vision is one of six stories. Origin explains why you began and purpose why you exist. Vision says what becomes different if the work succeeds. Customer and product show how the business works commercially, and impact shows whether the future is starting to arrive.
Teams often merge purpose and vision into one abstract statement about a “better future”. Kept separate, vision helps with current decisions, such as which market to enter, which product to refuse and which partnership to pursue.
Start from a future condition
“We will be the global leader in X” describes the company’s ambition. A vision describes the world. Start with these questions.
- What becomes normal that is unusual today?
- What stops being necessary?
- What can customers, communities or systems do differently?
- What evidence would tell us that the transition is happening?
A five-part Vision Story
- Present constraint
State what in the current system limits the future you want.
- Future condition
Describe what is materially different when that constraint is removed or reduced.
- Human or operational consequence
Show what the change means for a person, organisation or system, so the future stays concrete.
- Your role
Be honest about the part the company can contribute. Climate transitions usually take many organisations.
- The bridge from now
Name the next capabilities, deployments, markets or partnerships that make the vision more concrete.
Vision needs boundaries
The farther into the future a story goes, the easier it is to make untestable claims. Separate vision from forecast. “We are working towards a world where…” is different from “this market will reach X by 2035”, and the second needs a source and assumptions. A credible vision can be ambitious and still admit uncertainty.
An illustrative example
Weak: “Our vision is a sustainable world where nature and business thrive together.”
Stronger: “We are working towards a future where biodiversity change can be measured continuously enough to inform land and infrastructure decisions before ecological loss becomes visible too late.”
The second version gives the organisation a direction. It also creates questions the product and evidence must answer.
Vision for each audience
- Investors
Show how today’s wedge can grow into a much larger company, which capabilities or markets open next and why the team has a plausible route through the risks in between.
- Employees
Show each function how its work connects to the future condition, and ask what it would do differently this year if the vision is serious.
- Customers
Translate the vision into the buyer’s world, naming the capability, risk, cost or opportunity that changes for them. They can value the next step on its own merits.
Origin can explain conviction and vision can explain scale. Evidence, economics and investor fit still carry the case. A vision is useful when it sits close enough to change the team’s priorities.
Vision is allowed to evolve
Companies learn, regulation moves and technology changes, so a Vision Story can grow more precise over time. Update it deliberately, so the whole business works towards one future.
Vision Story test
- Can a reader describe what is different in the future?
- Is the future bigger than the company and specific enough to picture?
- Is our role credible and bounded?
- Does the story explain why current choices matter?
- Have we separated ambition from forecast?
- Can the team use the vision to decline work?
Tell us what needs to move.
Bring the brief if it is clear. If it is unclear, tell us where the work is stuck.
Bring us the problem
