I am writing with a contrary view because it is what I actually think, and also because I hope that it will spice up the dialogue on both our sites.

I have posted previously on my blog about why you don’t need a vision. I used to think that visions were important. As I reflect on actual experience working in organisations, I have come to the conclusion that they are not necessary.

I appreciate that vision is an appealing idea and that famous people like Tom Peters and Peter Senge have propounded that they are necessary, and that lots of other people think this is the case. I think that organisational life is too complex and unpredictable to respond well to a simple solution like creating a vision.

I think that as leaders our change efforts will be much more effective if we do not waste time on “vision”. Instead, we should tell people what our intentions are, what we want to achieve. And then observe and listen closely to their responses. And respond accordingly.

Insight through day to day interaction is vital. People change people. In that individuals take their lead, in terms of behaviour, from those around them (those who have influence anyway). In my experience a vision may be well communicated, and people can chant it easily; but they don’t necessarily know how to translate that into the right behaviour.

For example, a sales person in an organisation with a vision ‘to be the customers first choice of service provider’ is under pressure. The customer wants the equipment in 3 weeks, yet he is told the lead time from the factory is 12 weeks. The customer is screaming at him so he arranges for a free of charge hire until the kit is delivered. Beneficial for the customer, but a guaranteed loss maker for his organisation! Perhaps a better behaviour would be to challenge the lead time and encourage collaboration across divisions to find an alternative.

For a vision to become real, behaviour has to change (or at least be ‘right’). And action are driven by a complex interaction of motivational drivers, culture, reward systems, performance management, social networks etc etc.

Future posts will cover this in terms of communication and behavioural change. And i welcome debate and comments and blog submissions around such topics from anyone who has something interesting to share.

People’s actions are driven by much more complex things than the company’s vision. Such as their background, their interactions with others in the organisation, their own intentions.

As consultants we should be able to account for these things in our advice to our clients.

As you say, perception and interpretation – how people make sense of things – are key. Communicating in ways that resonate with people’s own perspectives, interests and motivations is an important part of this. And, for me, this means shifting the primary focus of communication from message passing to joint sensemaking.

I talk in Informal Coalitions about leaders (throughout the organization) providing vision through their day-to-day interactions with staff. By that I mean helping people to ‘see better’ or to make different (and, hopefully more useful) sense of issues and events than they might otherwise have done. From this perspective, vision is more about insight than far sight.