Developing a strategic vision is the process by which an organization’s senior managers determine what directional path the company should take and what changes in the organization’s product – market – customer – technology focus would improve its current market position and future prospects. An entrepreneur must know how to develop a good vision. Here we are explaining five steps to develop a good vision for your organization.
The challenge in developing a strategic vision is to think creatively about how to prepare a company for future.
The process of developing a vision and writing a vision statement can be a time-consuming but it gives value to the efforts took. A vision statement may be of one person or the collective image of the future for an organization.
Thus developing a vision is an exercise during the entrepreneurship to determine which direction the company should move and also when a company needs to change direction in order to survive or to maintain success.
Many successful organization need to change direction not in order to survive but in order to maintain their success.
Thus there exists entrepreneurial vision and strategic change vision. It is important to follow the process in developing vision in each case. But the understanding and methods to follow in each step may be different for different case, different environment, different organization etc.
Steps to Develop a Good Vision for Your Organization
Here we are going to evaluate five steps to develop a good vision for your organization. The steps are as follows:
1. Understand the organization and its environment
The first step in developing a strategic vision for your organization is to understand your organization and its environment.
Understand the organization means understand the nature and purpose of your organization and understand the type and category of your organization.
The basic nature of an organization can determine by knowing its present purpose and value in the society.
It is also important to know what impact it can make to the society. Answer some questions like why the organization should exist in the society? What happens if the organization opts to exist from the society? What difference you can provide to the society with your organization?
If your organization already exists and want to change the direction in future you need to understand the organization as it exists now.
It is important to understand clearly what made the organization to change its direction for future? That is to understand the comprehensive picture of the existing system within its environment is needed.
The reason for need of change may be due to change in environmental conditions like political, financial, social, cultural etc. Understanding the reason in prioritizing order is important for starting a change in strategic vision.
2. Understand the characteristics of a good vision for an organization
Second step in developing a good vision for your organization is to understand the characteristics of good vision.
The characteristics of good vision give you the guidelines for creating a good vision for your organization. Thus you will be able to make a good vision which will help the organization to build its future.
Developing a good vision will deliver value to the organization if it has its characteristics. If the vision doesn’t have the characteristics, the efforts and time you spend in developing it will be in vain.
So it is important to understand what are the characteristics of a good vision? It is also help you to know what a vision has to do for your organization.
3. Discuss with critical individuals
Critical individuals include those who involved with the organization. This includes owners, top management, leaders, well-wisher for the organization, sponsors, experts from the industry, strategic consultants etc.
Discuss with critical individuals to understand their expectations and interests regarding the organization.
This discussion will help to understand the reason for existence of the organization. It will also help to understand the opportunities and threats an organization can face in future.
4. Research about future possibilities and threats
Vision is a statement which shows the direction for future of an organization. So it is important to understand the future possibilities and threats of organization.
A research about future possible changes in environment of business or activity can help you to develop a clear and good vision. Understand the environment of your organization like social, economical, political, cultural, technological, supplier, competitor, etc.
If you could able to understand the trend of the environment the future possibilities of organization can be explored.
5. Writing vision
The last step in developing a vision is to write it in paper. It is the statement which identifies as the vision of an organization. This is by consolidating all the information gathered during the process.
The vision statement should be written in clear and well articulated words so that the reader should understand it well.
The words should be chosen in such a way that it will communicate clearly to employees and provokes them to bring out their best.
The words should be chosen in such a way that the views should be clearly communicated to inspire readers and achieve all the objectives a vision statement is intended to do.