What’s More Important Than an Inspiring Vision?

Leaders are visionaries.  

At least that’s what we have been told and what we expect of ourselves! 

Most of us who lead, love the idea of stirring people to action with a compelling, inspirational vision. A vision that is so beautiful that people rally to serve it, even sacrificially.  

We envision ourselves as Henry Vth on the St. Crispin’s day battlefield (“We few. We happy few! We band of brothers!”) 

Or stirring up commitment by “teaching them to year for the vast and endless sea.”  

Or maybe just being Wayne Gretzky telling our people that the key to a successful mission is to “skate to where the puck is going”.  

But what if vision is overrated today?   

What if you are trying to cast a vision in a time of fog, or a mountain of disorientation? 

 How, in the words of one compelling book, can you lead “when you don’t know where you are going?”   How do you lead, that is, in what we call, “uncharted territory?”

While a stirring vision may have been important in the past, in today’s rapidly changing and disrupted world, we work with our clients to understand and build their organizational or congregational future around three elements that are more important–and more effective–than vision.  Values, Pain Points, Prototypes. 

Or to put it another way, 

• Not vision, but values, 

• Not a picture but pain points. 

• Not a plan, but prototypes. 

While in the future newsletters and blog posts, we’ll take up all three of these, let’s begin with perhaps the most controversial. 

Values are more important than vision.  The huge surprise when we work with clients on leading change is that we don’t start with change, we start with what will NEVER change.  We help those who we coach and consult understand that even more important than a mission-study is a self-study. That more important than a compelling vision are the core values that we hold most dear.  Most leaders are surprised by such a “conservative” starting place.  Isn’t this where we learn to “go off the map?”  Indeed it is! 

But the jumping off place for a big off-the-map adventure into uncharted territory is taking stock of the most important things that are the most essential to us while we are still “on the map.”  Going into this new world of uncharted territory, requires that we first get crystal clear on what is so important that we dare not lose it.  If we are going to have to “drop the canoes” and “let go of what got us to this point”, what do we dare not drop or let go?  

These are our actual organizational values–the organizational “DNA”, the identity that makes our congregation or organization unique. Values are more important than vision because when we recommit to our most cherished values, we are committing to preserve that which makes the change process worth undertaking.   

In a paraphrase of one leadership scholar, Jim Collins, “First you determine what will NEVER change, then you prepare to change everything else.” 

The next time you think that you need leadership vision to see far into the future, consider that the truly visionary leaders are those who see with discernment the reality of what is truly most important.  

And then start leading from there.  

If you are interested in learning more about the adaptive coaching and consulting process of AE Sloan Leadership for leading change, just contact Ali at admin@aesloanleadership.com for information and a free consultation.