Visioning and
Corporate Governance
Presentation to
FMI/CGA/CMA PD Event
February 3, 2004
Gordon S. Gunn, CA, CISA, CMC
Victoria, BC
The real voyage of discovery consists not in
seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes
- Marcel Proust
1
Agenda
• A Model of Corporate Governance
• Vision and Visioning
– Importance of Vision
– Hoover’s Vision
• Exploration
• Essence
– Paradoxes for the Visionary
– The Visionary Organization
2
A Model of Corporate Governance
• Governance
– “the processes and structures that an
organization uses to direct and manage its
operations and program activities.”
– “the structures, functions (responsibilities),
processes (practices) and organizational
traditions that the board of an organization uses
to ensure accomplishment of its organizational
mission. These determine how power is
exercised, how decisions are taken, how
stakeholders have their say and how decisionmakers are held to account.”
3
A Model of Corporate Governance
• Key Governance Responsibilities
– Stewardship
• Assume ownership of the organization and ensure its
survives and grows
– Vision
• Define a vision
• Develop the goals and strategies that ensure that the
vision is achieved
– Integrity
• Set the “Tone at the Top” and represent the
shareholders/stakeholders/members
4
Vision and Visioning
• So, what is a Vision?
• What are the attributes of a Visionary?
• Are we born a Visionary or is it something
we can learn?
Paradox of the Visionary
The more you are right, the more wrong you will be
5
Vision and Visioning
• Vision:
– Merriam Webster
• The act or power of imagination
• Mode of seeing or conceiving
• Unusual discernment or foresight
– “An informed and forward-thinking
statement of purpose” Gary Hoover
• Visioning
– The action of defining a vision
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new
roads, armed with nothing but their own vision - Ayn Rand
6
Vision and Visioning (cont)
• Powerful Visions
1963 - I have a dream
10:50
7
Vision and Visioning (cont)
• Applicability - The ability to be
visionary is equally applicable to:
– An individual;
– A family, a team, a group
– An enterprise/organization
– A nation
– Humanity
8
The Importance of Vision
• Great enterprises succeed because:
– They see things that others do not see
– They ask questions that others do not
ask
– They chart their own course, combining
insights and strategies into a blueprint
for a uniquely focused enterprise
Fail to build your own future, and someone is going to build one for
you – Gary Hoover
9
Hoover’s Vision
• Hoover’s Vision – Original Thinking for
Business Success – Gary Hoover
• Three keys to success:
– Exploration: Observing and understanding
other people and how their needs, desires,
interests, values and tastes change over time
– Essence: Serving other people by making their
lives better
– Execution: Developing a style that expresses
your own dreams and passions even as it
serves the needs of others
10
Exploration
• Curiosity
– Innovation starts with curiosity – asking,
looking, seeking
– Have an open, absorbent, ready mind
– The ability to observe is fundamental
– Get back to a child-like sense of wonder
• The ability and willingness to be amazed
– Illustration
• What mathematical formula is approximated by the
value of 3.14…?
• What value is approximated by the value of 1.6181?
• The Divine Proportion (Phi) (see
11
http://evolutionoftruth.com/goldensection/body.htm)
Exploration (cont)
• Ponder first, act later
• Get into the information flow:
– Let information flow through you like a river, not
a pond
– Take notes
– Pass the info on to at least one person who
might find it interesting
– Be a two-way info conduit
– We are at our strongest when we are learning
and at the same time sharing what we know
12
Exploration (cont)
• Technique
– Within your personal or professional life,
seek out eccentrics – people who are a
little different – who may have an
obsession or passion
– Take them to lunch - Find out what
drives their passion
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is going Wayne Gretsky
13
Exploration (cont)
• Reduce complexity
– Separate the meaningful from the meaningless
– Understanding comes from focusing on what is
important and linking it together with other
information
– The key is to know 5 things:
•
•
•
•
•
Know what matters
Know what ties together
Know where to look for information
Know how to analyze information
Know how this info relates to you, your job, project,
personal goals, enterprise.
14
Exploration (cont)
• Technique
– When reading a book, try the following:
• Read the cover and inside jacket
• Look at the copyright page to see when the book was
written
• Read “About the Author” to see where they are
coming from
• Read the Table of Contents and think about what is
says about the book
• Read the 1st paragraphs of the 1st chapter and the
last paragraphs of the last. If this is not enough to
understand the premise of the book, read the first
paragraph of each chapter.
• Look for tables, charts, maps and graphs. Study
each and see what conclusions you can reach.
• Scan the index for people, places and subjects that
you already know something about, and which will 15
therefore help you weave the book into your mind.
Exploration (cont)
• Technique
– At the end of every day, ask yourself
“What did I learn today?” Write it down!
16
Exploration (cont)
• Comprehensive thinking:
– Bring everything we learn into a unified body of
understanding
– Work with word clusters – individual words can
have inexact meanings
– Words stand for ideas, concepts & emotions
– Word clusters are words that have overlapping,
related meanings
– Example: To be a successful leader, we must
be – dedicated, committed, obsessed, focuses,
single-minded, unwavering, unstoppable, selfinvested, all-on-the-line.
17
Exploration (cont)
• Connecting what you know:
– Assume that every fact relates somehow
to your own success:
• 10% of facts have clear connections
• 40% have no connections
• 50% have hidden connections
18
Exploration (cont)
• Technique:
– Think of your industry as a board game:
•
•
•
•
•
What are the chance cards?
What are the penalties?
Who are the players?
What are the defining moves?
Where is Boardwalk on your board?
19
Exploration (cont)
• Look for patterns
• Chains – understand the chain that the
thing you are studying is part of
• Time chain – embryo, baby, child,
teenager, adult, senior citizen, deceased.
• Multiple-dimensions
– Every entity is part of multiple groups or chains
• Common chains – Time, age, path, price, hierarchy,
classification, quality
20
Exploration (cont)
• Redefine and reclassify your world
– Name the seven continents?
– What is the largest string instrument in an
orchestra?
• Great minds break through definitions that
aren’t right
• Railroads lost out to truckers because they
saw themselves as railroads rather than as
freight transportation companies
• If you start your search for understandings
with bad definitions and classifications, you
will not hope to learn
21
Exploration (cont)
• The Expected World:
– All of us tend to think in familiar channels
(ruts)
– We seldom venture outside our own
industries
– If you are not looking around, you’re not
likely to see much
– Nothing has ever been discovered by
looking in the same place and the same
way as everyone else.
22
Exploration (cont)
• Technique:
– Go to your favourite bookstore and buy $100
worth of magazines or books you’ve never read
before
– Focus on a subject you’ve been curious about
but never really pursued.
– Write a summary of what you have learned
– Or, research a famous person in history. Who
were their friends, enemy’s, competition,
students and teachers? What were their
passions?
23
Exploration (cont)
• Technique
– List all of the professional journals and trade publications
you read semi-regularly
– Compare the list against the following:
• Agriculture
• Media/Entertainment
• Banking/Finance
• Medicine/Health Care
• Construction
• Military
• Education
• Retail Sales
• Government
• Telecommunications
• Hospitality
• Trade
• Information Technology
• Transportation
• Utilities/Power/Fuel
These 15 industry groups account for >50% of GDP. How many of these
groups are represented on your list? The range of experience you are
exposing yourself to is defined through media choices. The
narrower the range, the less ready you are for change.
24
Exploration (cont)
• The role of serendipity – as we explore,
leave our emotions and biases behind
• Examples
– George de Mestral’s walk in the woods led to
the development of velcro
– Percy Spencer’s melted Hershey bar while
working in the microwave labs at Raytheon led
to the microwave oven
– Pierre Omidyar’s fiancee’s PEZ collection led
him to start eBay.
The question is not what you look at, but what you see Henry David Thoreau
25
Exploration (cont)
• Seeing what others do not
– Be skeptical
– Look behind the headlines
– Look for lessons that can be
transplanted
– Step outside your own world and look at
what might appear to be odd from other
points of view
Learn to see, and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds
of our vision - Carlos Castaneda
26
Exploration (cont)
• Learning from and Living with Paradoxes
– Understanding the future, first and foremost,
comes from looking at the past
– Understanding the world depends on an
understanding of our own town, our own
neighbourhood
– Successful organizations hold true to a
consistent essence. They must also adapt to
the changing needs of their customers and new
technologies. Knowing what to change and
what not to change are at the core of
leadership.
27
Exploration (cont)
• Looking through different lenses
– Visionaries must confront the
“impossible”
– The more points of view, the better
– The more specialized we become, the
greater our need for leaders who can
help bring unity to our efforts
– Breakthroughs are usually made by
people with a broad view of the world
28
Exploration (cont)
• Techniques:
– Study ideas you disagree with strongly
– Understand the “enemy” better than they
understand themselves
– Put yourself in the shoes of your
customer regularly
– See things in their normal context, how
the customers see them.
29
Exploration (cont)
• Looking for gaps and vacancies
– Find a need and fill it
– Continually search for new ways to
serve people better
– Look at thing that are working, that are
popular. How can they be adapted to
your organization?
– Look for best practices.
30
Exploration (cont)
• Why History Matters
– The importance of watching trends
– Example – implications of increasing
participation of women in the workforce
on retail markets
– Example – implications of growth of the
suburbs for Sears
– Implications of the baby boom – people
do important things at predictable
points in time
• Dramatic expansion of four key industries:
healthcare, education, travel and financial services
31
Exploration (cont)
• Why History Matters
– Implications of increasing population
diversification
– Implications of Diversity of Avocations
and Interests
– Separate what is changing from what is
not changing.
The further backward you look, the further forward you can
see - Winston Churchill.
32
Exploration (cont)
• Techniques
– Seeking patterns through time
• In what direction is change taking place?
• At what rate of change taking place?
• Is the rate of change constant, accelerating
or declining?
– Recycle old ideas
• The PT Cruiser, the Ford Mustang, Snow
White are examples of recycling of old ideas
that were successful.
33
Exploration (cont)
• Why Geography Matters
– Everything happens in time and space
– The first question we often ask a new
acquaintance is “Where are you from?”
or “Where did you grow up?”
– Geography suggests a culture, history,
ethnicity, a way of life.
– Knowing “where other folks are coming
from” is critical.
34
Exploration (cont)
• Seeing the World through Foreign
Eyes
– We are all foreigners to someone
– Travel is a great opportunity to absorb
new ideas
– No substitute for being there
35
Exploration (cont)
• Technique
– When traveling, make the place your
own. Don’t follow the same path as
everyone else.
– What is the most striking thing about this
place?
– What seems odd?
– How is it the same as home?
36
Exploration (cont)
• Technique
– Conduct research into some of the
leading futurists (e.g., Frank Ogden,
Faith Popcorn, Nostradamus)
– Identify the craziest ideas they are
talking about
– Consider how those crazy ideas might
become part of your future
37
Exploration (cont)
• Role of Technology
– Two key trends:
• Leapfrogging
• Convergence
• When you study technology, consider three
questions:
– What is it capable of doing?
– What should it be able to do?
– What it might stumble onto?
• Technology should make someone’s life
easier, more productive, more interesting
or more fun.
38
Exploration (cont)
• In the Fools Box
– One approach to exploring the future is to ask questions
about problems and solutions. Sometimes, we don’t
know the problem or the solution, only the questions.
– In the Fools Box, you build questions into your
organization. This is how you are able to live in the
present and the future. You embed contradictions in your
organization by being certain that someone inside it is
living outside it.
– In the Fools Box, constraints must be relaxed so that the
truth may be spoken without fear of retribution.
– The Fool must be able to say the sky is falling and be
wrong and look ridiculous and not be punished for doing
so.
– The Fool can destabilize on a regular basis everything
your organization thinks about itself.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those
that have not got it – George Bernard Shaw
39
Essence
• The Power of Vision
– Vision is “an informed and forward-thinking
statement of purpose” that tells us why an
organization exists and what it is trying to
accomplish.
– A vision should be informed, based upon an
understanding of the world around us.
– Vision should reflect what you expect and hope
your organization will become.
– A Vision should be highly customized, not
generic. There is no standard vision formula.
40
Essence (cont)
• The Power of Vision
– A Vision should reflect the organization’s
personality and culture
– A Vision should reflect “core values”
– A fundamental element in the “ticking clock” of
a visionary company is a core ideology—core
values and sense of purpose beyond just
making money—that guides and inspires
people throughout the organization and
remains relatively fixed for long periods of time.
Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the
time. Vision with action can change the world - Joel A. Barker
41
Essence (cont)
• Exercise – which of the
following vision
statements belong to:
To become a world-class marine
transportation system that is
customer-focused and
financially viable.
BC Ferries
Washington State Ferries
To be the most efficient and
affordable, customer-focused
ferry operator in the world.
42
Essence (cont)
• Exercise – which of
the following vision
statements belong to:
Royal Roads University
The University of Victoria
Camosun College
___________ will build on
the strength of its people –
students, faculty, staff and
alumni – to strengthen our
position among the best
________ in Canada,
recognized for excellence
in teaching, learning,
research, artistic creativity,
professional practice and
service to the community.
To excel at the provision of
continuous learning for
people in the workplace.
____________ is a
comprehensive
educational institution
providing our community
with access to the
knowledge and skills
relevant to the future
economic and social
development of the region.
43
Essence (cont)
• Exercise – which of the
following vision
statements belong to:
___________ is a prosperous and
just province, whose citizens
achieve their potential and have
confidence in the future.
Government of BC
Province of Alberta
A vibrant and prosperous province
where ________s enjoy a
superior quality of life and are
confident about the future for
themselves and their children.
44
Essence (cont)
• Exercise – which of the
following mission
statements belong to:
To help our clients and our people
excel
KPMG LLP
Deloitte & Touche
At _____, we turn knowledge into value for
the benefit of our clients, our people and the
capital markets. We help companies to grow
with confidence. We create fulfilling career
opportunities. And we help to build trust
between investors and organizations-a vitally
important job in the current business climate.
We aim to be recognized as leaders in terms
of the services we provide and the industries
we serve. This means driving ourselves to be
the best in everything we do.
45
Essence (cont)
• Exercise – which of the
following vision
statements belong to:
To create a great city of communities which
cares about its people, its environment and
the opportunities to live, work and prosper.
City of Victoria
City of Vancouver
To be the most livable
city in Canada.
46
Essence (cont)
• A Vision:
– Bonds individuals in the organization
– Inspires
– Is an anchor in hard times and times of
change
– Is a potent competitive tool
– Builds community with others
47
Essence (cont)
• Technique (The Visionary’s Handbook)
– Freeze your reality at this precise moment in
time – Take 60 seconds for each of the
following:
– List all the things you are (benchmark)
– Declare a major in your future by listing all the things you
will be. This is the reality you hope to invent.
– List your postulates about the future: “Things that will
have to be true in order for me to be what I will be.”
– List the things that mark you as a radical among your
peers.
Revel in the certainty of change. With each change, you are opening
up to the full range of your own possibilities.
48
Essence (cont)
• In The Visionary’s Handbook, Jim
Taylor and Watts Wacker suggest that
a visionary needs four things:
– An understanding of who you are
– An understanding of where you want to
go
– An ability to recognize their own seminal
moments – where the seeds to their
future are planted
– An attitude of insurgency
49
Essence (cont)
• Technique
– When visioning, repackage the concept of time
within your organization
– Review your future every 19 weeks, or every 5
months, or some other asynchronous interval
and you’ve placed your review at odds with the
normal rhythms of your organization and made
it disjunctive instead of conjunctive
– That’s part of what it means to have the attitude
of an insurgent
50
Essence (cont)
• Built upon a foundation of curiosity, history
and geography, and with an on overriding
passion, a Successful Vision has four
attributes:
Passion
Clear
Curiosity
Consistent
History
Unique
Servicing
Geography
51
Essence (cont)
• Clear:
– Streamline the vision, simplify the story
– Plain speaking is critical
– Use simple ideas:
• Southern Airlines example – “Third-grade
vision” – any 3rd grader can understand
52
Essence (cont)
• Consistent
– A course based upon a sound idea can
serve well over time
– Know what to change and what not to
change – what is part of the foundation
and what is dynamic.
53
Essence (cont)
• Unique
– A successful vision is unique
– Most successful organizations do one
thing and do it well
– To differentiate, find gaps in a competitor
or market
– Juxtaposition yourself against the
competition
– Example: Variety vs Specialty
54
Essence (cont)
• Unique
– Try and own a word in the customer’s
mind (Volvo – ‘safety’, Fedex –
‘overnight’)
– What is your ‘word’.
– Great names score points in both the
“clear” and “unique” pillars of a
successful vision
– You can differentiate visually, through
logo and products
55
Essence (cont)
• Serving
– “The only valid reason to the existence of any
enterprise, for profit or non, is to provide
products or services to people… to somehow
make the world a better place.”
– Service is purpose:
• We all need a purpose, to be useful
• A mission of service is a mission of importance
• The server is always in a ‘heads up’ mode, always
scanning for new ways to serve people
56
Essence (cont)
• Find a need and fill it
– Scanning for opportunities:
• Copy an existing idea into a new geographic territory
(i.e. Southwestern and Westjet)
• Copy an existing idea from one industry to another
(e.g. superstores)
• Chain it up
• Brand an unbranded field
• Split things into finer specialization
• Make a dramatic breakthrough in a business and
improve the way things are done
• Invent a whole new business.
57
Essence (cont)
• New Visions for Established
Enterprises
– Seek opportunities to streamline
– Refine and subdivide
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pick niches
Develop new technologies/techniques
Change the cost structure
Change the service and price structure
Adopt new attitudes
Specialize
58
Essence (cont)
• Technique
– I will celebrate my one-hundredth birthday on
January 1, 20__.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What are the implications of this goal?
What must I do to achieve this goal?
What must I think about?
What must I avoid?
What can I ignore?
How am I likely to change my future by pursuing it?
And what have I learned from the perspective of that
one-hundredth birthday?
– Consider health, finances, family, relationships,
coping with a future world
59
Paradoxes for the Visionary
• The Visionary’s Handbook identifies
important paradoxes for the visionary:
– The closer your vision gets to a provable “truth”,
the more you are simply describing the present
in future tense
– The more successful you are at predicting the
future, the more you destabilize the present, in
every way
– Paradox of Size: The bigger you are, the
smaller you need to be. The smaller you are,
the bigger you need to appear
– To succeed in the short-term, you need to think
long-term
60
Paradoxes for the Visionary
• The Paradox of Time: You need to live in the
present and the future
• Technique
– Take a sheet of paper. On the left column, list all your
activities in any sphere over the last seven days that
were directly and solely related to living in the present
tense. In the right column, list all the activities that were
directly and solely related to life in the future tense.
– Go through the lists and assign a value to each activity (1
– low importance, 10 being high importance) based on its
importance to your life.
– Total the values on the two columns.
– How many of you are living more in the present? How
many of you are living more in the future? How many are
living in the ‘pressure tense’ balanced between the
present and the future?
Know your own story and follow it to the Future.
61
Paradoxes for the Visionary
• The Paradox of Competition: Your biggest
competitor is your own view of the future.
– “We have met the enemy,” “And he is us”.
– You have to compete in the future dimension
without destabilizing competition in the present
and without subverting the core values that
have sustained your business in the past.
Focus on your immediate competition, and you’ll end up imitating its
possibilities. Focus on the consumer at the other end of the channel
and you’ll immerse yourself in your own possibilities.
62
Paradoxes for the Visionary
• The Paradox of Action – You’ve got to
go for what you can’t expect to get.
– Nothing will turn out exactly as it is
supposed to. No path can take you
safely with assurance to where you want
to be. Where you want to go to today is
almost certainly not where you will get to
when you arrive. Regardless, you have
to go for what you can’t expect to get.
Focus on your immediate competition, and you’ll end up imitating its
possibilities. Focus on the consumer at the other end of the channel
and you’ll immerse yourself in your own possibilities.
63
Paradoxes for the Visionary
• The Paradox of Leadership – To lead from
the front, you have to stay inside the story.
– Leaders need to understand that while they
always will be judged by the numbers in the
short term, the story they have to tell and their
capacity to make listeners live inside the story
of their company or organization or country will
determine in the long run how the numbers go.
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it –
Winston Churchill
64
Story Line for your Future
• What goes into the story:
– It must be in the future tense
– It must embody mythic figures from the past who have
shaped the present and will shape the future
– Needs to embody the truth of your organization,
contained if possible in a single word, and that truth—that
single word, cannot be jury-rigged or otherwise
constructed.
– The story must be anecdotal, told in plain language.
– The story needs a hero and a villain. It should have
some melodrama; some action; climax and resolution; a
plot that turns toward the good at the end on the strength
of a key virtue; a beginning; a middle; and an end—all
the things that go into a good story.
– The story must have the ring of its own truth. It has to
come from the heart, not the division of public affairs.
65
Future Day Planner
• Technique
– List the seven seminal moments that have gotten you
where you are.
– Now list the seven seminal moments that need to happen
for your future to come true.
– Next, create a time line between now and whatever date
you have set for your future ambition, and place each of
the seven seminal moments on the continuum between
Point A and Point B. Finally, write three notes in the
margin:
• “All dates plus or minus two years.”
• What unexpected moments have occurred since I last
consulted this time line that are sufficiently important to
change the trajectory of where I want to go?
• Has anything of such historical significance happened since
I last consulted this time line that the future that was my
ambition is no longer valid.
– Now, your future has a Day Planner.
66
Visionary Organizations
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of
Visionary Companies
– In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
suggests that we can build a visionary
organization.
– Visionary companies are premier institutions—
the crown jewels—in their industries, widely
admired by their peers and having a long track
record of making a significant impact on the
world around them. A visionary company is an
organization—an institution.
67
Visionary Organizations
• In their matched pair study, Collins and Porras
shatter 12 myths of success:
1. It takes a great idea to start a great company.
2. Visionary companies require great and charismatic
visionary leaders.
3. The most successful companies exist first and foremost
to maximize profits.
4. Visionary companies share a common subset of “correct”
core values.
5. The only constant is change. (Core values in a visionary
company form a rock-solid foundation and do not drift
with the trends and fashions of the day. And the basic
purpose of a visionary company—its reasons for being—
can serve as a guiding beacon for centuries, like an
enduring star on the horizon.
6. Blue-chip companies play it safe.
68
Visionary Organizations
• In their matched pair study, Collins and Porras
shatter 12 myths of success:
7. Visionary companies are great places to work, for everyone.
8. Highly successful companies make their best moves by brilliant
and complex strategic planning. (Make some of their best
moves by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and
quite literally, by accident.)
9. Companies should hire outside CEOs to stimulate fundamental
change. (Home grown executives rule!)
10.The most successful companies focus primarily on beating the
competition. (They focus primarily on beating themselves).
11.You can’t have your cake and eat it to. (Embrace the “Genius
of the AND”—the paradoxical view that allows them to pursue
both A and B at the same time.)
12.Companies become visionary primarily through “vision
statements.” (Not sufficient in itself)
69
Visionary Organizations
• Clock Building, Not Time Telling
– Having a great idea or being a charismatic
visionary leader is “time telling”; building a
company that can prosper far beyond the
presence of any single leader and through
multiple product life cycles is “clock building.”
– If you’re involved in building and managing a
company, think in terms of being an
organizational visionary and building the
characteristics of a visionary company.
The single most important point … is the critical importance of creating
tangible mechanisms aligned to preserve the core and stimulate
progress. This is the essence of clock building.
70
Visionary Organizations
• Preserve the Core / Stimulate Progress
– “If an organization is to meet the challenges of a
changing world, it must be prepared to change
everything about itself except its basic beliefs as it moves
through corporate life…The only sacred cow in an
organization should be its basic philosophy of doing
business.” Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
– Core ideology works hand in hand with a relentless drive
for progress that impels change and forward movement
in all that is not part of the core ideology.
– The drive for progress arises from a deep human urge—
to explore, to create, to discover, to achieve, to change,
to improve.
– In a visionary company, the drive to go further, to do
better, to create new possibilities needs no external
justification.
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Visionary Organizations
• Core ideology
– Visionary companies don’t merely declare an ideology,
they also take steps to make the ideology pervasive
throughout the organization and transcend the individual
leader.
– Visionary companies more thoroughly indoctrinate
employees into a core ideology, creating cultures so
strong that they are almost cult-like around the ideology.
– Core Ideology = Core Values + Purpose
• Core Values = The organization’s essential and enduring
tenets—a small set of general guiding principles; not to be
confused with specific cultural or operating practices; not to
be compromised for financial or short-term expediency.
• Purpose = The organization’s fundamental reasons for
existence beyond just making money—a perpetual guiding
star on the horizon; not to be confused with specific goals
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or business strategies.
Visionary Organizations
• Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs)
– BHAGS can be a particularly powerful mechanism to
stimulate progress.
– A BHAG is clear and compelling and serves as a unifying
focal point of effort. It has a clear finish line, so the
organization can know when it has achieved the goal;
people like to shoot for finish lines.
– A BHAG engages people—it reaches out and grabs them
in the gut. It is tangible, energizing, highly focused.
People “get it” right away; it takes little or no explanation.
– A goal cannot be classified as a BHAG without a high
level of commitment to the goal.
– To set BHAGs requires a certain level of unreasonable
confidence.
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Visionary Organizations
• Cult-Like Cultures
– Because the visionary companies have such clarity
about who they are, what they’re all about, and what
they’re trying to achieve, they tend to not have much
room for people unwilling or unsuited to their demanding
standards.
– Found four common characteristics of cults that the
visionary companies display
•
•
•
•
Fervently held ideology
Indoctrination
Tightness of fit
Elitism
– Visionary companies tend to be cult-like around their
ideologies.
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Visionary Organizations
• Try a Lot of Stuff and Keep What Works
– Visionary companies more aggressively harness the
power of evolution. Evolutionary processes can be a
powerful way to stimulate progress.
– Example – Johnson and Johnson’s entry into consumer
products began by accident.
– Example – 3 M – evolved from a failed mining company
into a manufacturer of sandpaper and grinding wheels.
– Five basic lessons for stimulating evolutionary progress
in a visionary company.
•
•
•
•
•
Give it a try – and quick. Do, Adjust, Move, Act.
Accept that mistakes will be made.
Take small steps
Give people the room they need
Mechanisms – build that ticking clock
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Visionary Organizations
• Visionary companies install powerful mechanisms
to create discomfort – to obliterate complacency –
and thereby stimulate change and improvement
before the external world demands it.
• Managers are visionary companies simply do not
accept the proposition that they must choose
between short-term performance or long-term
success. They build first and foremost for the
long-term while simultaneously holding
themselves to highly demanding short-term
standards.
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Visionary Organizations
• Building the Vision
– A well-conceived vision consists of two major
components – core ideology and an envisioned future.
• Core Ideology consists of two elements: core values and
core purpose.
– Core values are the organization’s essential and enduring
tenets – a small set of timeless guiding principles that require
no external justification; they have intrinsic value and
importance to those inside the organization.
– Core purpose is the organization’s fundamental reason for
being. More difficult to identify that core values.
– Envisioned Future - consists of two parts:
• A ten to thirty year BHAG and
• Vivid descriptions of what it will be like when the
organization achieves the BHAG.
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Visionary Organizations
• The essential questions about the envisioned
future involve such questions as:
–
–
–
–
Does it get juices flowing?
Do we find it stimulating?
Does it stimulate forward momentum?
Does it get people going?
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Powerful Visions Endure
“I believe that this
nation should commit
itself to achieving the
goal, before the
decade is out, of
landing a man on the
moon and returning
him safely to the
Earth.” May 1961
2:58
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Reference Sources
• Hoover’s Vision – Original Thinking for
Business Success – Gary Hoover
• Visionary’s Handbook, Jim Taylor and
Watts Wacker
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of
Visionary Companies, Jim Collins and Jerry
Porras
• Creativity, Inc. Building an Inventive
Organization, Jeff Mauzy and Richard
Harriman, Harvard Business School
Publishing, 2003
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Questions
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