A strategic vision is an essential element of strategic planning, identifying a company’s ultimate purpose and establishing parameters for planning development. A viable vision must be realistic, relevant, attractive, and flexible. A visionary leader and skilled employees are crucial for successful implementation.
A strategic vision is a broad term used to describe one of the essential elements of an overall strategic planning effort. In essence, a vision is the identification of a company’s goal or ultimate purpose. In this context, the strategic vision helps establish the parameters for planning development of specific steps to achieve that vision, as it establishes the general direction that the enterprise will pursue. A viable vision clearly looks beyond where the business is today and determines where the owners want the business to be at some point in the future.
To successfully implement a strategic vision, several key elements must be taken into consideration for the vision to be truly viable. One of these elements is that the vision must be realistic. This means that the vision must be somewhat specific rather than a vague idea about the future. For example, setting a vision to become the world’s largest pencil maker might be a bit broad, while a vision to capture five percent of the pencil market in a given country within the next ten years has one focus and has the potential to be viable.
Along with feasibility, a strategic vision must be relevant to those who will be involved in achieving that ultimate goal. This means that both employees and owners must recognize the potential of the vision and be committed to helping it come true. If everyone in the company does not believe and support the vision, the chances of achieving the goal within the identified time frame are significantly reduced.
A truly strategic vision is attractive, as all parties involved can identify certain benefits of pursuing the vision. This means employees can expect better working conditions that result from pursuing the vision, as well as additional financial benefits from working hard to achieve the goal. The degree of attractiveness must be sufficient to sustain that commitment even when unforeseen hardships threaten to slow progress toward the goal, inspiring all concerned to overcome adversity and keep moving forward.
A final feature of a strategic vision is that there is room to adjust strategies as and when needed without actually changing the end goal itself. This built-in flexibility allows you to change policies and procedures when necessary to maintain momentum, introduce new marketing and advertising campaigns, make product line improvements, and any other strategies that can move the company forward towards achieving the vision.
To be successful, a company must have at least one visionary who can formulate a viable and attractive strategic vision. Employees with the skills needed to bring the realization of that vision to life are just as important to the well-being of the company. A company composed primarily of visionaries, or one that doesn’t have at least one visionary among its owners and managers, is much more likely to remain stagnant at best or completely fail at worst.
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