If you don’t know where you are going any road will get you there. Of course it might not be where you wanted to end up!

Kotters third step is to create a vision. A compelling vision of where you want the organisation to be in a few years time, what do you want to be different in the future, oh and don’t forget what you want to be the same in the future as well? The visions could be about different markets, different products, different ways of organising, different organisational culture, different levels of profitability, turnover etc. Whatever it is about it needs to be clear and compelling (I will talk about communicating the vision in the next blog).

Now there is a lot of brain power and breath expended on the difference between mission, vision, purpose and I am not into that game. I don’t care what label you put on it so long as you have spent a significant amount of time working with whoever you need to work with (more about that later) to establish clarity about what you want your organisation’s world to be like after the change. It needs to be short, sharp and simple and if it cannot be explained in Daily Mail speak then it is far too complicated. Remember, not only do you have to explain it to the Daily Mail readers in the staff canteen but you will be surprised how many of your external stakeholders will be pleasantly supportive of a vision, mission and purpose that does not require a degree in philosophy understand.

It is rumoured that at one time Coca-Cola’s vision was “A glass of Coke within arms reach of everybody in the world”. Whether or not this is true is immaterial, what does matter to me is that was a very simple very clear and very understandable vision, which could lead everybody in the company to ask themselves “Is what I am doing getting a glass of Coke closer to everybody in the world?”

So how do we go about crafting this vision? Well, it depends. There is plenty written, and I might well write more myself, about different approaches to creating vision. There is a chapter in my copy of Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline Fieldbook that is so tattered I had to photocopy someone else’s to be legible. He makes the point that crafting a vision, or more accurately the approach to crafting a vision, depends upon a series of factors, including the time available, how radical the vision might be, how ready willing and able are the workforce to be involved in crafting it and so on. What is clear to me is that it is very rare for it to be appropriate for the Chief Executive to craft the vision on her own and then to announce it to the world fully formed. At the very least this vision is the work of the guiding coalition and I would argue that the more people can be involved in the better, not least because if they are involved in crafting the vision then they are already supportive and advocates and can help spread that vision to anyone else affected.