Why Vision is Crucial

...Bo Short

Vision is the basis for the best kind of leadership. Instinctively, most of us follow a leader who has real vision and whom we sense can transform that vision into meaningful, effective and inspirational strategies. Vision is not simply projecting what the sales targets should be for the next quarter. Vision is not just seeing things as they are. Vision is the ability to see things as they can be.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said: “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. Leaders must invoke great vision. Those leaders who do not are ultimately judged (to be) failures.”

A leader with vision, embarks on voyages to new worlds. A vision looks ahead to the future and analyzes it… anticipates it. A vision, almost by definition, does not run from change as so many people do, but embraces change as absolutely essential. A leader without vision eventually loses his or her followers. An organization without vision, whether that organization is a business or a church or team or a family eventually stagnates and perhaps even wastes away.

Leaders need an ability to look through a variety of lenses. We need to look through the lens of those who follow us. We need to look through the lens of change and innovation. We need to look through the lens of our own hard experience and failure. We need to look hard at our future.

...more to come