Vision and Strategy
How to turn a vision into reality — through a general objective, clear criteria, goals and a strategy that translates them into concrete tasks.
Every change begins with some kind of vision. Great changes demand great and noble visions. The question, of course, is: “how do we realise a vision, our own or a shared one?”.
The road from vision to realisation is not linear. We must turn every vision into some kind of general objective that we intend to carry out over the next two or three years, depending on the horizon of the planned changes.
The next thing is to agree on the criteria by which we will make decisions along the way. Once we are aware of both, we should set clear goals that are understandable, achievable, acceptable — in other words, realistic.
Now we come to the key word called “strategy”. Put most simply, strategy means the path or the way of achieving the set goals. More than 2,000 years ago the Greeks defined this concept in just this way — a concept that is much used today, and at the same time much abused. In essence, strategy means reaching the desired goal within a given period of time, without compromising other goals or other criteria that matter to us.
In order to carry out a vision, we must once again set a general objective, establish a policy — that is, a set of criteria for making important decisions — set clear goals for the desired future, and then, through strategy, transform those goals into a concrete programme and concrete tasks. Only at the level of tasks assigned to teams and people, and by monitoring those tasks, do we actually carry out something that we had previously raised to the level of a vision of the future.
One of the greatest problems in business today is that most employers have no vision of development at all. Those few who do have some defined and formulated vision think that, without these steps that transform the vision into concrete tasks, they can build and create something. Without translating the vision into a general plan, goals and strategies, and assigning the appropriate tasks to specific individuals, we can practically do nothing. Such expectations are entirely false expectations.
SBS team — comprehensive business consulting and training.