💜 Establishing a clear vision for the future

Hello and Happy Thursday!

I don't know about you, but I feel like I blinked somewhere back in May and suddenly it’s the end of September. Q4 starts next week, y’all. 2024 is practically around the corner.

Of course if you’re in any capacity to plan on behalf of your team or your workplace experience, you already know how stressful the end-of-year crunch can feel. Lucky for you, today’s newsletter highlights the work of my friend Lois Weinblatt of True North Visionaries, who has the exact tool you need to start your year calm, collected, and clear.

So read on, because that “oh crap it’s already October” feeling is so 2022.

Yours in abundant clarity,

Jill

P.S. If you’ve considered investing in my Training for the Modern Manager program, you don’t want to miss this announcement. Spots are filling fast.

Think you understand vision? Think again. 

I was recently on a call with a Head of People who shared that their CEO mandated a return to the office, citing a lack of clarity and alignment as cause for the change. 

I found myself wishing we’d had this conversation 6-months ago, so I could point their CEO to a solution that actually achieves that end goal.

That solution? A company vision. 

Before I lose some of you - I’m not referring to the two-line motivational statement that usually comes to mind when we talk about company vision. 

I’m referring to the following explanation taught to me by visioning consultant Lois Weinblatt:

Vision is a clear definition of success at a specific point in the future.

By her definition, a company vision is a document defining the desired future state of your organization - its growth, its impact, and its culture. It solidifies a clear direction for your company, and serves as a critical filter for strategic planning and decision-making. A vision needs to be inspiring, strategically sound, and should encapsulate the values and purpose of your company.

This new understanding of company vision - and of the process of creating and aligning on one - forever changed how I approach organizational clarity. 

It all started with an exercise that has stuck with me to this day.

Lois was leading a workshop I attended, along with eight other leaders. She talked about how CEOs often try to motivate their teams by telling them the old adage “you’re not just laying bricks, you’re building a cathedral!”  She then had us close our eyes and imagine a cathedral, instructing us to really use our imaginations and get specific.

• What materials were used to build the cathedral? What color is it?

• How large is the building? How many doors and windows are there?

• What’s the environment like within the cathedral wall?

Upon opening our eyes, she asked one of us to describe our cathedral - and then asked for a show of hands: who else had built that exact same cathedral?

Of course, none of us raised our hands. Sure there was some crossover in materials or location, but no two cathedrals were the same. Not by a long shot.

That’s the part CEOs so often miss. They task their teams with building something beautiful - heck, they may even get folks fired up and inspired to do it -  but they never tell them exactly what kind of cathedral they’re building.

That's like asking a construction team to build based on a general description of a structure, but no blueprints. 

It’s a recipe for spinning wheels: everyone works hard, but with no certainty of exactly where they ought to be going, teammates wear out quickly.

Or, as one founder told Lois, “Before undertaking this process, it felt like we were all running at 3,000 miles an hour, going vaguely the same direction, without a finish line in sight.”

Oof. Did that hit hard for you? It knocked the wind outta me when I first heard it. That grinding, frenetic feeling. That urgency with no clarity. It felt so relatable.

That is the power of a vision. You’re not just tasking your team with building a cathedral.  You’re committing to why you’re building it, where it’ll be located, when you’ll finish, what it’s going to look like, and how it’s going to feel to stand inside of it. Once clarified, you can work backwards to determine how you’ll build it, via a sound strategic plan. 

In my last Head of People role, I brought in Lois to help our company create a 3-year vision. It was the most impactful project I undertook in the role.

There’s nothing loosey-goosey or woo-woo about visioning. No shade to some of the other practices associated with the word “vision,” but we’re way beyond poster board collages here. The act of defining and aligning on a specific company vision is truly an exercise in democratizing clarity for your entire org. 

Here are just five of the benefits we experienced from having a vision:

• Fully-Remote Alignment. Our remote-first team said reading the company vision gave them a sense of clarity unlike anything they’d experienced in former jobs. They saw where we were headed and what parts they played in achieving success.

• Decision-Making Clarity. We introduced the question, “does this get us closer to or further away from our vision?” It was a powerful tool in empowering distributed decision making, which was vital to our culture.

• Leadership Buy-In. The visioning process challenged our leadership team to communicate, disagree, hash things out and make the critical decisions we’d been avoiding - which ultimately led to alignment. Having tackled the hard questions together, there was more cohesion and ease between leadership than ever before.

• Better-Aligned Hires. While we didn’t share the whole vision with potential employees, we did use pieces of it to showcase where we headed. It was instantly clear who was energized and motivated by what we were sharing.

• More Engaged Onboarding. I can’t tell you how many times I heard, “I’ve never experienced anything like this!” when reading the vision to new hires. They clearly understood what we were focused on, and could immediately connect how their skillset would help us achieve it. 

And it’s not just the finished vision itself that yields such benefits, it’s the very process of creating it. Lois’ visioning process doesn’t just make room for reflection - it requires it.

Only once you understand your company’s past trajectory and present state - approaching it with curiosity and honesty - can you determine the non-negotiables for the next stage of growth. Armed and empowered with all this insight and alignment, you then clarify your shared definition of success at a specific point in the future.

Which brings us back to why I wish I could’ve shared this process with the CEO who felt the only way to gain alignment in his company was to get people back in the office. 

If your team is dealing with misalignment, decision-making issues, communication bottlenecks, and/or confusion around priorities, you’re struggling with symptoms of a more insidious root cause: lack of alignment towards your company’s vision. 

Alignment is achieved with clarity, not with physical proximity.

Struggling with the symptoms? There are a couple of ways for you to establish your own company vision.

1. Hire Lois. I cannot recommend this option highly enough. Lois has been helping organizations (ranging from global orgs to growing startups) create visions for nearly a decade. You can learn more about that here, or schedule time to chat here.

2. Utilize the free Minimum Viable Vision (MVV) framework. As you know, I’m all about giving people the tools to create change in-house. Last fall, Lois was generous enough to create a DIY vision exercise exclusively for my Want To Work There podcast listeners. Today, we’re giving you access in the “Your Turn” section below!

Things We're Loving Right Now

A deeper dive into visioning: Want more True North brilliance in your ears? Cue up part 1 and part 2 of my podcast conversation with Lois. We tackle FAQs and go into way more depth on the entire visioning process.

A perfect ten: If you missed my announcement on LinkedIn, you should know that the cost of Training for the Modern Manager, my evergreen training program, increases next year. I’m setting aside 10 spots for a one-time cost of $10k before the end of the year. Curious? Put some time on my calendar! 

Everything fall: Having officially relocated to Minneapolis, I'm experiencing my first "real" fall in many, many years. Obsessed doesn't begin to cover it. All the changing leaves, crisp breezes and pumpkin decorations have me giddy. Not to mention the feeling of cozy when I light candles and adorable new pictures of my dog Theo frolicking through gorgeous trails. Evidence of the latter below.