PROFILE OF THE SUCCESSFUL VISIONARY LEADER
BY
DR (MRS) S. L. ADEYEMI Ph.D
DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
UNIVERSITY OF ILORIN, ILORIN.
ABSTRACT
At the present, the management literature does not differentiate clearly between visionary
leader types or articulate clearly the ingredients of visionary success. This paper provides a
categorization of visionary leader types and an associated configuration of visionary success
context components. The paper describes work being undertaken by authors and
organizational strategies which aims to help configuration, on the one hand, and which helps
their collaborating leaders to think about and evaluate their own leader-organization
competencies.
INTRODUCTION
This paper describes a categorization of visionary leader types and provides examples of each
type of visionary in action. It also draws from the literature on entrepreneurial, visionary
leadership to create a ‘visionary success configuration’ comprising of a range of inter-related
environmental, organizational and leader-personal constituents.
The paper goes on to study and discuss how small firm leaders aim to develop their own
understanding of visionary success configurations, generally, and to help their visionary
collaborators achieve better understanding of their particular strategic configurations and
competencies.
The paper seeks to help a range of types of people interested in the leadership of
organizations and how strategic skills and situations might be improved. Such people include
financiers, would-be employees, would-be and practicing leaders, and management
development professionals.
VISIONARY TYPES AND VISIONARY CONTEXT
Some contributions in the management literature tend to concentrate on the particular type of
leader and so implicitly project a view that only that one, generalizing, visionary leader exists
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(for example Kotter and Heskett, 1992, for a view of the big business visionary, and
Robinson, 1991, for a view of the small firm visionary).
Alternatively, other theorists provide visionary examples drawn from a range of contexts
either without drawing attention to the different contexts in which they operate or with only
superficial treatment of the differences (for example, see Peters, 1988, whose discussion
centers mainly on big business visionaries but who also describes small organization and
departmental visionaries, and Mintzberg, 1991 (b) who mixes ‘entrepreneur’ with ‘visionary’
and concentrates on the small firm situation but who also refers to medium sized family
organization examples, crisis-turnaround and public sector entrepreneurs).
Analysis of the literature reveals, however, that a number of types of visionary are described
by theory. Each of the types we have in mind in this chapter operates successfully in a
particular organization context. It is important to differentiate between different types of
visionaries and different types of visionary contexts because of the need to fit the right type
of visionary to the particular context. Five types of visionaries are described next. These are:
The successful Start-up Entrepreneur who brings a new product, service or process to
create a receptive and lucrative market niche, which is served via the formation and operation
of the entrepreneur’s own firm. An example of this type of visionary is provided in
(Richardson, Gregory and Turton, 1993) where Iviartin Port, the workaholic creator of
Kroustie European Bread Ltd., a growing, high quality, specialist bread retailing operation is
discussed.
The Family Firm Visionary who takes the helm of an old established firm which is still
entrenched in the ‘family’ approach to business and which has been suffering from ‘strategic
drift’ (Johnson, 1988)- living complacently on its former glories while the environment
around it has grown more and more hostile. Richardson (1992) provides an example of this
type of visionary leader in his case study of the next PLC organization, and the way it
changed the face of UK high street fashion retailing, under the leadership of the
entrepreneurial George Davies, in the 1980s.
The Slumbering Giant Re-awakener Visionary who reaches the top position in a wellestablished but highly bureaucratic and complacent industrial, commercial or professional
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giant-organization. This leader then reorganizes to remove innovation-and-responsiveness
stifling red tape, repositions the enterprise to exploit bigger value-contributing
product/market opportunities and reinvigorates middle and junior management by providing
them with the (controlled) discretion which enables them to get on with their jobs. Kotter and
Heskett (1992) provide many examples of this type of visionary and visionary context,
including those of Sir John Harvey Jones and the ICI business he successfully reoriented in
the 1980s.
The Champion Intrapreneur who, from a position of middle manager ‘fights’ his/her
‘formal organization’ (the bureaucracy) to overcome barriers and innovate a dream idea into
a successful product, service or process. This type of visionary is the focus of Gifford
Pinchot’s attention (for example, Pinchot, 1985). An example includes Chuck House a
‘frustrated oscilloscope designer’ who ‘bucked’ an order from top management at Hewlett
Packard to drop the project he was working on and instead covertly developed an award
winning, big sales generating electronic lens.
The Departmental Visionary is the manager of a department inside an organization who,
despite occupying a position which has been perceived historically as being merely one of ‘a
mere cog in the administrative wheel’, nevertheless thinks and acts as a visionary leader and
seeks to make his department especially useful, attractive and different. This type of leader is
recognized by Tom Peters in his description of Phil Turner, a facilities manager:
Phil related to his managers how one could get the impression that the people who
work for the corporation were ungrateful…. ‘But …. I don’t think that’s what they are
trying to tell us at all. I think what they are trying to tell us is that they care about their
space. I have a vision for this department. I got the idea from [an executive vicepresident]. The other day, [he] came by my office. The door was open and he-walked
in. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “ Phil, I want to thank you for planting
those flowers outside my office windows. They make me feel good”. So I think our
job is to make people feel good, declared Phil”.
TOWARDS A PROFILE OF THE VISIONARY LEADER
This section of the paper draws from the works of a number of theorists who have sought to
describe the visionary leader.
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Analysis of these works leads to the tentative conclusion that the visionary leader has
‘generic qualities’ i.e. across visionary types and contexts the same general motivational and
skill qualities apply. Thus, successful leadership is more likely to be the outcome where
someone in charge of an organization is well endowed with these generic leadership
characteristics and is able to customize them to the particular context in which he or she
leads.
The profile of the visionary leader offered below, therefore, provides a checklist against
which readers can think about and evaluate the context to which they, or someone they are
interested in, fit theory’s ‘ideal visionary’ description. The visionary leader characteristics are
described briefly in what follows:
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Imaginative and experienced: Intuitive and Analytical: The visionary makes
‘mental leaps’ which take ‘what is now’ into ‘what could or should be’. The
visionary draws from a deep understanding of what already is – he or she is
usually very experienced in the industry in which his/her new approach is to prove
successful. He/she observes situations and listens to gain key insights into how
things might be effectively rearranged. The visionary is good at imagining what
can be but also very analytical in assessing situations.
George Davies, for example, referred to above, left university because he ‘caught
the retailing bug’ working during his summer holiday. By the early eighties he had
amassed massive experience with a range of retailer organizations and started to
develop his ‘affordable exclusivety’ vision. Sir John Harvey-Jones, as another
example, had spent his career, since leaving the navy, working Cough the ranks of
ICI and getting to know the business thoroughly. Industry knowledge and
repetitive experience combined with observing, listening and analyzing skills
seems to be prerequisites of visionary success.
2.
Seeks Excellence: A key visionary insight is often one which sees mismatches
between how things are done currently and how things might be done more
effectively to produce higher quality, differentiated outcomes. Often, then, the
market-winning formula which is developed is based simply on redefining the
mundane to create a specially attractive approach to dealing in commodities –
bread for example (as in the Martin Port example referred to earlier). The vision
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does not have to involve brand new invention or immediately interesting products
and markets.
In operationalising the vision, too, the visionary nurtures quality – he/she tends
personally to those aspects of the business, which are essential to ensuring that a
high quality product and service reaches the customer. Underpinning the quality
orientation is a basic drive – be recognized and acknowledged as ‘the best’ in the
industry at whatever he/she is doing.
3.
Oriented towards Action: Visionaries prefer to talk rather than to write or plan. Not
surprisingly, given the visionary’s reliance on experiencing and listening, his/her
common management style is one of MBWA (Managing By Wandering Around)
The visionary is more a ‘logical incrementalist’ (Quinn, 1980) than a business
planner. The vision acts as a compass but the successful visionary is incessantly
amending its implementation incrementally as he/she meets problems, learns of new
situations or discovers more appropriate ways of moving forward.
4.
Empowered: Successful visionaries are usually brilliant communicators. In conveying
their aspirations and expectations, visionary leaders talk in metaphors to make things
clear and simple. They have what Mintzberg (1991) describes as a ‘profound ability
with language’ This ‘way with words’ enables deeply thought-out visions to quickly
become shared meanings.
Visionaries are often revered. They attract the description ‘charismatic and inspiring’.
People are drawn to the visionary and his/her cause. The visionary’s passion and
commitment are contagious.
In terms of interpersonal style, the successful visionary is a double-sided leader.
Whether one particular style remains fundamental (i.e. the manager always has a
‘home base’ style) is still, open to discussion, but in practice successful visionary
reorganizers demonstrate task and people centered approaches.
The desire to achieve ‘core’ objectives (including quality and its associated states of
consumer satisfaction and efficiency of operations) produces forcefully directive
styles.
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However, the successful acceptance and applications of quality concepts depends,
ultimately on the internalization, by subordinates of these key values. In turn, this
state of internalization owes much to favourable reactions to managers practicing
open, communicative and respectful approaches to working with people. Open door
policies, informal methods of contact, requests for help on organizational problems
and the treatment of subordinates as mature equals are hallmarks of the ‘people
centred half of the modern management strategist. The successful visionary leader,
too, arranges all aspects of the organization’s reward, communication, training,
targeting, and information etc. systems to achieve vision indoctrination. Edgar Schein
(1987) has studied born leaders create organizational culture the accepted ‘way we do
things around here’ in this way.
Visionaries create the conditions of trust and responsibility which empower
subordinates to lead their bits of the enterprise and to feel ownership of its direction
(Mintzberg 1991) also makes the point that visionary leaders become part of an
‘empowerment loop’ as well as empowering, the leader is empowered him/herself by
higher subordinates. The subordinates hand back trust, responsibility, support and
applause and this moulds the leader even more into being the visionary.
5. Calculating Risk Taker: The visionary is often portrayed as the ‘Stop at nothing’ highrisk-taking entrepreneur. In fact, although visions involve doing new, largely untested
things (and so are inherently risky to some extent) the knowledge, experience and
thought which have gone into their formulations create situations of calculated risk.
Many of the activities of visionary leaders are seen to be risky because the rest of us
haven’t been let into the secret.
Visionaries, too, tend to do vision before they commit to it or broadcast it. This
characteristic leads the visionary to check out in small ways, the pertinence of his/her
vision – perhaps by test launches of new products, or by introducing aspects of the
vision to unaware colleagues and by observing their responses. Martin Port, referred
to above, always test launches new sites before committing to them on a permanent
basis. Building and selling vision by doing it also avoids the danger to the long term
well-being of the vision from its being perceived by important resource-inputters to
have Haws and inconsistencies before it is fully formed. Proven success dilutes the
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strength of those ‘it will never work’ ‘ we’ve never done things this way before’
opponents of change who seem to be ever-present obstacles to the visionary in his/her
early development days.
The successful leaders of this paper do not base their approaches on winning ideas
only. Often a strong motivator is the desire to do things better than they have been
done before and to avoid the mistakes they have experienced. Tom Peters, for
example, talks about his first job in the Navy and about ‘my luck in experiencing
early’ a superb leader and lousy one’ (Peters and Townsend, 1986). Later, he went on
to prescribe: ‘fix what’s been wrong in every place you’ve been’. (Peters, 1988).
6. Independent:
From the above discussion it should be apparent that successful
visionaries have both a need and the confidence to take responsibility for and
ownership of their projects. They will listen to, draw from and work with others but
ultimately make up their own minds, create their own visions and make the
organization their organization. These people, too, almost always display an
autocratic side to their character. This is a necessary attribute for the single-minded
commitment, which is required to instill vision living in a change reticent
organization and to get things done, ultimately, in the way the visionary wants things
to get done.
7. Passion for Achievement: The visionary is passionate about achievement. A deeply
held, long term aspiration to b e successful is the motivator of the fanatical
commitment the visionary displays in seeking” success in his/her current project and
position. A current visionary project, therefore, is more pertinently seen less as an end
in itself but more as a byproduct of the visionary’s enduring need for achievement.
The current situation represents a milestone which measures the visionary’s present
position on his/her achievement journey.
This passion for achievement underpins the visionary leader’s capacity to work much
harder and longer than other types of people and to maintain this level of workaholism
over the long term. The visionary’s norm of performance is that which others are only
able to achieve in short bursts. Visionaries are the people who are first to arrive at
work and last to leave, and who ask, “What else is there but work?”.
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8. Reward Oriented: The visionary seeks reward for self and profit for the organization.
At the personal level the visionary emphasizes a range of rewards. He/she has a strong
need to b e in charge of his/her own destiny and to be the ‘boss’ of his/her own
organization. This leader is also driven by the search for self-esteem and social status.
Money is additionally important because it measures and represents achievement and
recognition.
9. Optimistic: The visionary leader works on the premise that this is the best of times to
live, that the world is full of opportunities and that most things are possible. This type
of leader too, also has a strong sense of having much control of Amber on destinythat ‘success is mainly down to me’
10. Powerful: The leaders we have examined devote much attention to the development
of mutual respect, trust and co-operation. Usually subordinates speak of their
successful reorganizer chiefs with respect and often with admiration and warmth.
Through the use of a range of motivational and control mechanisms the leader attracts
amenable ‘new blood’ to the organization and moulds existing personnel to new ways
of thinking and working. Invariably successful re-organization produces, as an end
result, supportive and loyal subordinates. Staff who stay initially but find themselves
unable to come to terms with the new regime and culture, often leave to find more
conducive organization homes.
The visionary creator-reorganizer must have sufficient formal position together with
control over attendant rewards and punishments to make- and force through, when
necessary – desired changes.
The visionary leader- qualities can be disadvantages too. A major paradox of
management is one which has the successful visionary sowing the seeds of his/her own
eventual downfall (see, for example, Grenier, 1978, Gummer, 1991, Mintzberg 1991).
The success qualities most likely to degenerate into disadvantages and failure creator; are
intolerance of bureaucracy (because this acts as a barrier to the advantages bureaucrat and
‘professional’ approaches to strategic management can bring to supplement the
visionary’s preferred approach); empowering/autocratic management style (which can
create opponents who dislike this style of leadership and who work to ‘bring down’ the
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‘king’, and which often accompanies an unwillingness by the leader to delegate power
and jobs even when the organizational context has grown and diversified to require this);
passion for achievement (because this often propels the visionary organization into
diversity and complexity and out of the well-known domain of success, and because it
generates excessive work levels which can lead to illness-induced absences of the
mainstay of the organization the leader him/herself; Optimism and success (because
inappropriate excesses of these characteristics lead to an inappropriate sense of
invulnerability and dangerous risk taking).
Not all problems are created by the visionary him/herself, however, the manure of
business life today means that competitors and other environmental forces will quickly
seek to erode any competitive advantage, which the visionary has created. Sustainable,
long-lasting competitive advantage is difficult to achieve for even the most gifted
visionary.
Organizational and Environmental Aspects of the Visionary Configuration
Associated with the visionary’s personality, style and experience traits are a range of
organizational attributes and environmental circumstances. These include:

An attractive market place-one which has sufficient demand, and growth potential
and is especially attracted to the visionary’s new products, services and
approaches to the market.

A ‘ double-sided’ management/organization style-autocratic and democratic

‘Fitting’ planning and control systems – ‘hard’, professional, and ‘soft’,
interpersonal

System for directing and controlling organization

An empowering organization and empowered, motivated personnel

‘Cultural fit’ – people, systems and style in harmony – but not in a static
formation

A change receptive culture

Balanced, listening, and learning approaches to strategic decision-making.

Strong resources and high productivity- demonstrating performance ratios

A strong competitive position – competitive advantage

A high commitment to quality of process, produce- service and people
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
Strong networking skills and a strong and supportive network- a coalition for
success

Ethical, fair, collaborative, environmentally friendly, unselfish basis underpinning
the organization’s decisions and behaviours.
The Visionary Configuration is illustrated in Figure 1 below.
Experience
Style
Planning
Network
Control
Ethical
Empowering
Culture
Management
The
Visionary
Change
Receptive
Style
Listening
Decision
Ratios
Making
Quality
Resources
Competitive
Figure 1: The Visionary Configuration.
Facets of the successful leader’s character and facets of the organization he/she leads and of
the environment it operates in provide a comprehensive list of performance areas and
indicators against which a particular visionary’s configuration can be assessed to gain
understanding of its present and potential levels of success. For example, a particular leader
might ‘score high marks’ across most of the components of the success configuration except,
say, democratic and empowering management, while another basically sound configuration
might, possess all the attributes of success except for an increasingly unfavourable
competitive situation created by the arrival of successful ‘me too’ copiers. Yet another leader
might possess many of the personal attributes of the successful visionary but not yet have
introduced, professional control systems into his/her organization context.
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CONCLUSION
The visionary leader is the most charismatic of all our leader types. He comes in many forms
and contexts and has the ability to create or recreate organizations wherein each of their
constituent parts interact in mutually reinforcing ways to create a vision management system
which fits the nature and needs of modern, competitive and changing environments and the
important stakeholders located therein. The most important constituent of the vision
management system is the visionary leader himself. According to the literature on this topic
of leadership, this is the person who, to a large extent, single-handedly formulates a winning
vision of where and how the organization is to be in its environment and who takes prime
responsibility for ensuring that the organization’s people ‘live’ the vision.
The paper has focused on the characteristics of the ‘visionary’. It has presented a profile of
the ‘ideal visionary’, as synthesized from theory, and has provided a checklist of generic
visionary personal-qualities to help in the assessment of leadership potential. The paper has
also described a range of other components of the visionary success configuration
components which relate to the visionary’ organization and the environment it operates in,
Assessments of strategic capacity against these components should help in predicting the
likelihood of a particular leader achieving success, and, if appropriate, should lead to actions
to bolster any weakness which the checklist analysis reveals.
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