It is very difficult to find good companies with good people and good products managed by presidents with no vision. While there are many leaders with outstanding operational skills, these same individuals often have little or no visionary skills. Because visioning is a core competency of a leader it goes without saying the leader is responsible for setting the vision and facilitating the executive team in developing the vision statement—and ultimately, for being the cheerleader for the field of vision. The president of the company is the number-one advocate of the vision. Without a public display of emotion of the vision, the business plan will have a stillbirth.
The president or leader of the business unit creates the initial vision. This is done in draft and communicated to the executive team in the first planning activity. It is one of the first pieces of information discussed in the preplanning meeting. The suggestion of the president being responsible for the vision is very different from the current popular trend of bottom-up visioning. In some cases, there was never found a single instance where the bottom-up approach to building a company vision has been successful. Occasionally management teams try to claim this distinction, but on close examination their claims are easily refuted. Now let’s tackle the controversy of a leader’s single vision versus that of the masses. A single leader vision pushed down stands a high chance of failure. A leader can have a compelling vision but not get it institutionalized. That can happen when the management team doesn’t buy the vision or they don’t communicate it downward with the same degree of passion.