3R’s to Clearer Vision Statements
Developing a clear and effective vision statement has been proven to be harder than it sounds. Not because people have difficulty putting words together but instead the difficulty is in developing statements that provide compelling and inspiring meaning behind it. Too often leaders and organizations don’t put in the adequate time and intentionality to create statements that comes to life and jumps into the heart of the people within the organization.
In this blog I want to simply and quickly spell out a framework I adopted from Andy Stanley. I’m not totally sure what Andy calls it, but I have simply named it the “3R’s Framework.” This framework is provided to simply serve as some guardrails that can keep you away from creating meaningless and idle vision statements. So what are the 3 R’s?
Remember
In the process of developing a clear and effective vision statement, one piece of the pie to this framework is to develop something that people remember. Too often I have come across vision statements that are difficult to remember because they are generic and LONG! A vision statement should be no longer than a sentence. And if you need more than that you may want to reconsider the clarity of your vision.
For example, the vision statement for Disney is simply “to be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information.” Disney displays in their vision statement a clear and short vision that all of us can remember.
Repeat
Every vision statement should be easy to repeat. I’ve had the privilege of consulting many organizations and I am never caught by surprise when I ask (not only employees) but leaders to tell me the vision of the organization and they can’t tell me. What is always funny to me is when I come across a person who memorizes the vision statement and they are able to communicate it to me, but always struggle with my second request. “Can you repeat it please?” Every time this takes place you see the eyes go straight to the sky as they try to memorize what they just told me. In other words, your vision statement should be more than memorized material, it should be easy to repeat because it’s apart of the heart of the organization.
Retell
One of the most important pieces to the foundation of a clear and effective vision is the story behind the vision statement. This right here is where almost everybody gets it wrong. Many leaders and organizations fail to tell the story within their vision. Now understand that the story isn’t necessarily in the statement itself, but when the statement is mentioned, it should take every person to the back story.
The leader in most organizations will be unable to reach every single employee. But when your vision is clear and effective, it provides a thread of communication through other people within the organization who are able to internally retell the story behind the vision. It won’t be word for word but better yet, it will be personal to them.
In conclusion, don’t be like most leaders and organizations when developing your vision statement. Leverage the 3R’s. Make the vision statement easy to remember, repeat and retell. Vision is about the emotion, passion and the heart of an organization. Don’t fall into the trap of creating cute words and phrases.
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