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Strategic Management

Notes 5. It fosters risk-taking and experimentation.
6. A good vision is competitive, original and unique. It makes sense in the market place.
7. A good vision represents integrity. It is truly genuine and can be used for the benefit of
people.

Did u know? When does a vision fail?

A vision may fail when it is:
1. Too specific (fails to contain a degree of uncertainty)
2. Too vague (fails to act as a landmark)
3. Too inadequate (only partially addresses the problem)

4. Too unrealistic (perceived as unachievable)
A.D. Jick observes that a vision is also likely to fail when leaders spend 90 percent of their time
articulating it to their staff and only 10 percent of their time in implementing it. There are two
other reasons for vision failure:
1. Adaptability of vision over time
2. Presence of competing visions

2.2.6 Formulating a Vision Statement

Generally, in most cases, vision is inherited from the founder of the organisation who creates a
vision. Otherwise, some of the senior strategists in the organisation formulate the vision
statement as a part of strategic planning exercise.

Nutt and Backoff identify three different processes for crafting a vision:
1. Leader-dominated Approach: The CEO provides the strategic vision for the organisation.
This approach is criticized because it is against the philosophy of empowerment, which
maintains that people across the organisation should be involved in processes and decisions
that affect them.
2. Pump-priming Approach: The CEO provides visionary ideas and selects people and groups
within the organisation to further develop those ideas within the broad parameters set
out by the CEO.
3. Facilitation Approach: It is a “co-creating approach” in which a wide range of people
participate in the process of developing and articulating a vision. The CEO acts as a
facilitator, orchestrating the crafting process. According to Nutt and Backoff, it is this
approach that is likely to produce better visions and more successful organisational change
and performance as more people have contributed to its development and will therefore
be more willing to act in accordance with it.

While the above frameworks identify the extent to which there is involvement throughout the
organisation in the development of the vision, they do not address the specifics on how to
develop the actual vision itself. Some routines for producing vision are outlined in Table 2.2.

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