The success of a person as a top leader requires a lot of effort you push day-to-day operations, stakeholders engagement, product innovation, marketing strategy, and people management just to mention a few. The big factor that shows how far the company can move is the clear vision the company has. The work of a leader is to translate the clear vision of the company from papers to day-to-day operations. Once a leader fails to integrate vision and all aspects of the company such as systems, product or service innovation, stakeholders relationship, and employee experience management, the company dies.

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”- Lewis Carroll

Clarity

The vision should be clear and well understood by the top management and employees. The clarity of the vision connects all teams and departments to work on the same goal. Leaders need to ensure they give the right translation of vision to the employee so that they can all have a big picture of where the company needs to be. Lack of vision is a lack of sight for a company and results in the fatal death of the company. While working at NMB Bank, we used to have a culture of stating the vision of the company every day before the day starts. This was done to remind us as workers that “ this is where we want to be.” Do you have a clear vision as a leader? How do you translate the vision to reflect the operations, products, services, employee experience, business strategies, and relationship with stakeholders?

Vision Is Dynamic

In a world that is constantly changing every day, it is vital to keep track every day of how your vision as a company correlates with the external and internal environment. Though it’s not very common in a fast-changing world, a vision statement should reflect the changes that are happening at a global level. A big picture of where the company needs to be may easily be affected by external impacts. For instance, a rapid increase of technology and innovation in the banking industry made NMB Bank restructure the vision from “ Being a preferred financial service partner in Tanzania” to “ Being a preferred financial service pather.” It’s a small change in words but it has a big impact on the operation and the direction of the company. Removing “ Tanzania” shows clearly the willingness and readiness of the company to move beyond Tanzania and operate outside the borders of the country. The change in the vision of the company reflects the changes in operations. Any vision change should be communicated to employees so they can work on the pace of the new vision. The leaders should plan the frequency of reviewing their vision. Is your vision as a leader relevant?

Vision Is The Benchmark Of Success.

The work of top leaders is to translate the vision of a company into reality. Translating may mean creating a new product, launch a campaign, structure new company policies, creating partnerships, or innovating a product or service. Once all this is done, a work to review the success of company operation is measured based on the vision of the company. Everything that is done should reflect the clear vision of the company. Whether you launched a product or a campaign, how is it contributing to reaching your vision? There must be a connection between the systems of the company and the vision the company wants to achieve in the future.

The correlation between the visions of the company and the personal vision of a leader is another factor that should not be undermined. The implementer of the company’s vision is the leader of a company and him/ her needs to have a connection between the two sets of vision. The point of connection between the vision of the leader and the vision of the company can have a big impact on the company. Any differences between the two sets of vision can harm the growth of the company.

Are your visions relating to the vision of the company you are working for?