In large organisations it’s very easy to get lost in the day-to-day business and focus on current issues but having a clear vision is necessary to drive long-term growth or shape innovation.

To ensure you keep your organisation moving in the right direction you need to share your vision and make it clear to everyone.

First let’s clarify what a good vision looks like.

“To be the №1 Retailer in the USA”

Nope, this is not a vision. This is a generic goal, it isn’t time constrained and equally would be broadly the same every year. For many organisations this could be unachievable. This statement lacks the focus on how the leadership of your organisation believes they can achieve this goal. Your organisation probably doesn’t have one specific problem to solve, equally there will be multiple vision statements throughout the stages of an organisations development.

A vision needs to be a little more explicit, but also ambitious in nature and we need a constrained time frame.

One sunny day in early September of 1961 a man stood in front of an audience to address a nation to take a romantic notion and turn it into reality.

President JFK Speech at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas.

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

We can learn a lot from this.

Clarity.

Use clear, precise and uncomplicated language. It needs to be easy enough for everyone in your organisation to understand the objective.

Brevity.

It might be a complicated task but the language needs to be succinct.

A bold and simple statement.

“We choose to go to the moon.”

This is easy to remember and share.

It needs to be time constrained.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade”

We know when the deadline is, so we can build out a timeline to achieve this.

Acknowledgement of the difficult challenge.

“not because they are easy, but because they are hard”

Vision statements are there to challenge. We need to respect those who are going to be part of this and respect significant effort they will require.

Optimism.

“we intend to win”

Optimism from leadership instills confidence in your team.

Not our only task.

“and do the other things” “and the others, too”

A reminder that there are also other priorities.

Remember who the audience was. JFK didn’t choose to address his staff or share his message privately to congress or NASA. JFK had already stood in front of congress to convince them to fund the project, but he knew funding alone wasn’t enough to make it a success. JFK decided to share his vision with the entire nation, because ultimately he wanted everyone to contribute in any way possible to the success of putting a person on the moon. It worked.