In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails.—Peter Senge

At some point in his or her career, nearly every politician gets tarred with a catch phrase—and usually not a flattering one.

George Bush, Sr. is stuck with two.  There was “Read my lips, no new taxes,” of course.  But only slightly less unfortunate was his dismissal of what he called, “The ‘vision thing.'”

He was trying at the time to shake the impression that he was a competent day-to-day manager but lacked any grander vision of where he wanted to lead the country.  His choice of words and tone of voice didn’t exactly help.

John F. Kennedy had a vision: “A man on the moon before the end of the decade.” And it inspired the seemingly impossible. We had about 15 percent of the needed know-how when he made that declaration.

Bill Gates had a vision that there would be a computer on every desk in America.  And this was back when most people didn’t even know what a computer was!

I once had a CEO look me straight in the eye and say he didn’t really “go for” visions.  “I put my energy into training,” he said.  “Training, training, training.”

But training for what? I wondered.  You do training without a vision, you’re all gas pedal and no windshield.

A study at the Sloan School of Management showed that leaders who create, communicate, and implement successful organizational visions were shown to be more successful in EVERY measure of a business than those who did not.

Powerful, effective, propelling visions all have three things in common: (more…)