Most vision statements I have seen posted on the walls of organizations truly are not ‘vision’ statements at all. They suffer from being too generalized, bombastic or complex which hardly exude any confidence in the people who are to work towards them. Worst so that employees are not able to ‘visualize’ how the outcome will look like after reading the vision statement. The very purpose of having a vision statement is to help people clearly see how the fruits of their labor will look like. It has to excite them and make them feel they are already there. It should not be something which makes them feel there current state is a long way away from it.

Let me explain this with a few examples of ‘BAD’ vision statements which will hardly inspire people or be in their minds while they work. They are hard to remember as well.

“We aim to provide diverse set of scalable and strategic knowledge management tools to serve our customers, improving the possibility of overall satisfaction among our diverse customer profiles”

How vague and complex is this one? It is very difficult for even the intended customers to visualize how the final outcome will look like.

Let’s look at a vision statement which truly is a ‘vision’ and inspirational. This one from Microsoft

“There will be a personal computer on every desk running Microsoft Software”

“Reliance will help you make phone calls to your loved ones cheaper than a postcard”….famously said by the late Shri. Dhirubhai Ambani.

I’m sure you see the difference. Easy to remember, more importantly, easy to ‘Visualize’. You all know the impact these vision statements had.

Does your vision meet the criteria as I stated above? If not are you willing to relook and change it to be more visionary?