When is a vision not a vision?
When it is a mission. I am frequently amazed at how many people fundamentally misunderstand what a vision is, trotting out a mission statement as their vision statement. Is there a difference? Does it really matter? Yes and YES!! Yes, yes, yes there is a difference, and you bet your life it matters.
Missions are tangible and achievable – they focus on what could be, while visions are much less tangible, maybe even intangible, rarely achievable, and always focus on what should be. Missions flow out of visions, not the other way out; although, it is true to say, sometimes the pursuit of what could be opens our eyes to what should be, and a vision is birthed.
A vision is what you get when you see through a window to a better place – a better place in business, a better place in life, a better place that is some place other than when you are. A mission is a stage of the journey you will take towards that better place. A vision is a fixed point of reference: a compass against which you can navigate your course, always keeping you pointing towards your destination even when you seem to be moving further away.
I know I have talked about this before, but it keeps rearing its head as being an absolutely critical topic. For example, I have recently been working with an group with a view to a long-term business relationship . Their ‘vision’ is, in fact, a mission: it is achievable, identifiable, measurable and totally tangible.
In a meeting I asked them what their vision was, and they trotted it out: “To be a top three…”. “What then?”, I asked. “What do you mean, ‘what then’?”, they responded. “Well, what will you do when you achieve that goal? What then?”. Blank stares all round. “Look”, I went on, “I want to know where you are going – what lies beyond the goal that you could achieve in a couple of years. How do I know that you won’t pack up when you do that? How do I know you won’t start selling flowers instead of doing what you currently do? And how do I know that you have aspirations bigger than the here”and now – a focus on continually improving and extending as an organisation, and therefore offering me more, or better?”. Eventually they got it and said ‘Hmmm, we need to work on that”. “Yes, you do”, I replied.
You see, the trouble with a mission-based focus is that it is finite – it has a measurable end, and it raises the question ‘what next?’, or ‘where next?’. It’s a fairly simple distinction, and yet it is one that is sometimes hard to grasp: a vision is always just out of reach, it is that towards which we ceaselessly strive, but at which we are unlikely to ever arrive. If your vision is a destination easily reached, chances are it’s a mission, and if it’s not, I challenge you to look further, look higher and think bigger.
Missions take us towards our vision, and as we achieve them we gain encouragement to keep pursuing what should be. Missions break the journey into achievable chunks, they make the overwhelming bearable. They can sometimes move us in seemingly random directions, and it is only a vision that can bring order or purpose to those apparently chaotic or seemingly aimless legs of our journey.
When is a vision not a vision? When you have a chance of actually achieving it.
When it is a mission. I am frequently amazed at how many people fundamentally misunderstand what a vision is, trotting out a mission statement as their vision statement. Is there a difference? Does it really matter? Yes and YES!! Yes, yes, yes there is a difference, and you bet your life it matters.
Missions are tangible and
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When it is a mission. I am frequently amazed at how many people fundamentally misunderstand what a vision is, trotting out a mission statement as their vision statement. Is there a difference? Does it really matter? Yes and YES!! Yes, yes, yes there is a difference, and you bet your life it matters.
Missions are tangible and
">
When it is a mission. I am frequently amazed at how many people fundamentally misunderstand what a vision is, trotting out a mission statement as their vision statement. Is there a difference? Does it really matter? Yes and YES!! Yes, yes, yes there is a difference, and you bet your life it matters.
Missions are tangible and
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4 Responses to “When is a vision not a vision?”
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Wow, that last paragraph really got me. I have been visionless (and missionless) for way too long, but seeing how “missions make the overwhelming bearable” I could get back out there.
@Lisa – great to hear from you. We all have vision, it’s just that some of us deny it, some of us embrace it, some of us lose sight of it. I think all of us do a bit of each at different times as we journey through life.
Think of yourself as a syllable finding your place on a page in a story…
You’ve got to read Visioneering by Andy Stanley. Probably one of the best books on the topic in my little estimation.
@Jeff – awesome book – just chatting to a buddy in NWI about it, actually. Read it a few years back, then got the audiobook – not so much a text book as a set of principles to be chellenged by, and to challenge, I thought.