Create a Vision to Inspire the Organization

Four years after the Sputnik moment and a month after Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in Space on April 12, 1961, President John F Kennedy announced on May 25, 1961 before a special joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the moon before the end of the decade. It was a monumental commitment for the United States. Subsequently on September 12, 1962, President Kennedy delivered his more widely cited speech before a crowd of about 40,000 people at Rice University.

“We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”

John Jordan described the strategies Kennedy used for his speech: to inspire the nation: "a characterization of space as a beckoning frontier; an articulation of time that locates the endeavor within a historical moment of urgency and plausibility; and a final, cumulative strategy that invites audience members to live up to their pioneering heritage by going to the Moon."

Kennedy defined a vision, set a goal which is specific, time bound, measurable. The goal was set not because scientists at the time thought it was feasible, but because the country needed to “catch up or overtake” the Soviet Union in the space race.

Likewise, companies and organizations often define their vision and mission statements. A mission statement defines the company’s business, its objectives and its approach to reach those objectives. A Vision statement describes the desired future position of the company.

Those statements have to include both the vision to inspire the organization and people and also the specific goals so that organization can measure progress and achieve its objectives. When organizations set loft vision without the specific, measurable and time bound goals, it is very hard for the organization to translate those vision into actions and align the organization. On the other hand, simply setting goals and objectives such as financial targets, without the vision to inspire the organization, would not be sufficient to motivate the organization. The recent mass resignation as well as the increased challenges to the stockholder primacy practice are reflection of those economic trends.

During time of changes and uncertainties, organizations often need to find ways to rally the organizations around some purpose or aspirations. Volkswagen, as one of the largest automobile company in the world, has been facing many challenges due to the increased competition from electric car vs. its traditional platforms with internal combustion engines. Similar to most other automobile manufacturing, getting into the electric car business while trying to deliver for the core business has not been easy. VW announced last year that half of its sales are expected to be from electric vehicles by 2030 and almost 100% of its new vehicles in major markets should be zero emission vehicles by 2040. At the same time, valuation of Elon Musk’s Tesla has surpassed the next five largest car companies combined, VW being among them.

In order to spur innovation and galvanize his organization, Herbert Diess, CEO of VW, invited his main competitior Tesla CEO Elon Musk to call in to an internal conference with 200 VW top executives. The purpose of the conference reportedly was to get VW executives on board with the massive changes VW would need to make to confront the changing auto industry by “making faster decisions, less bureaucracy, more responsibility”. Herbert Dies twittered after the meeting, “with a new mindset and a revolution in our headquarter Wolfsburg, we can succeed the new competition. Big responsibility at a crucial point for our company.”

Many in the traditional industries that are being disrupted can probably resonate with those statements in the increasingly fast pace of changes both due to global competition, uncertainties in future of work, pace of change in technology, but most importantly increasing societal ESG call for action for businesses.

At a more fundamental business level, this is also intertwined with the debate between business strategy solely focus on shareholder value vs values to other stakeholders. The idea that the sole purpose of a firm is to make money for its shareholders got going in a major way with an article by Milton Friedman, the winner of Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976, in the New York Times on September 13, 1970. The concept was further cemented in place by the policy statement from CEO Business Roundtable in 1997 on “maximizing value for shareholders as the sole purpose of a corporation.” I remember my economics professor at Wharton explained to the class how focusing on shareholder value was the best way to ensure the interests of other stakeholders would be covered.

However, focus on environmental, social and governance for company operations is increasingly pushing those non-financial factors as part of the analysis process to identify material risks and growth opportunities associated with the overall society objectives. Companies are increasingly recognizing the need to define and communicate clearly their ESG objectives, not just for analysts and regulatory purposes, but also for attracting, motivating and retaining the young generations of talents. Employees, especially the new generations of employees, need more. They need to be challenged by a mission and inspired by a purpose.

Some might think that setting the vision and mission are the sole responsbilitites for the top management and aspiring leaders have little chance to influence those decisions. In reality, it is equally important for any organizations or teams you lead to have a clearly articulated purpose, regardless of the size of the organization. If you are leading a team within a large organization, you need to translate the overarching vision of the organization into something specific that your team can resonate and connect with.

I had a recent conversation with David Olivencia. Born and raised outside of Chicago, but he always a strong affinity with the hispanic community since his family came from Puerto Rico. He organized a group of like minded passionate people and together foundered an Angel Investors group to grow hispanic and Latinx ventures and support diverse founders and startups who are pushing innovation within their respective industries. On the one hand, the group recognized that currently hispanics only make up 2.3% of the US angel investors while the hispanic population is about 18.5 of the total population. They embarked on a vision to correct that statistics to support the community. On the other hand, they felt strongly that there were a lot of investment opportunities and money to be made since the community is currently so underserved. The fund has quickly grew from an idea to about 100 members and a portfolio of 15 companies and target to grow to 175 meters in three years.

Another example is based on my personal experiences. With 1.4 billions people in China, it is an important market for many businesses and we are not different. One of the challenges for local Chinese employees is the limited career growth opportunities without a large manufacturing base. During 2017 to 2020, I was leading the development of investment opportunity in China for ExxonMobil. While the overall business objective was to grow business in China, most the team members are much more excited to know that the investment would create more career development opportunities for them. The two objectives are consistent but the latter resonated and connected with the employees at a more personal level. As a result, we would focus more about the career opportunities when we communicate with employees and the team. Whenever possible, you want to create or define an identity for the team or organization which are aligned with the overall vision but translated to a level of specificity which are more connected with the people involved.

On a less successful example, I would like to share a conversation between former Secretary of Defense Dr Robert Gates with MSNBC Anchor Ali Velshi at a dinner event I attended on October 13, 2021 at the Asia Society Houston Center honoring Dr Gates, one of the greatest American servants. During his long and distinguished career, he managed to avoid partisan squabbles while working in the administrations of eight different presidents including serving as the secretory of defense for both President George W Bush and President Baraka Obama.

He shared some of his perspective about the mistakes US made and lessons we learned in the Afghanistan conflict including the failure to look at the war from Afghanistan perspective and to collaborate with the Afghanistan society. We built the Afghanistan military based on the mode of US military and American supply chain, rather than a military which would be self sustainable after US pullout. While the Afghanistan population needed wells for clean water and health care facilities, we built schools without knowing if there would be teachers. In other words, United States created a vision for the future of Afghanistan but the Afghanistan people were never really resonated with the vision. The dramatic fall of Kabul, while shocking to many Americans at the rapid collapse of two decades of a U.S.-led Western campaign to remake the country, is hardly surprising.

Most organizations have strategic planning process and it has its role for deciding on the strategic directions for the organizations. However, in the increasing uncertain time and fast changing environment, leaders need to think about vision, not just strategic planning, in order to inspire organization and people through changes by being adaptive, agile and ready to do what it take to survive and thrive in fast-changing market circumstances.