Common vision

This page describes a concept which is part of our glossary

OrganicDesign defines a common vision as a set of statements made about the future which all the members of an organisation are working together to achieve (i.e. they're all aligned with the vision). Vision statements are generally written in the first-person context and should cover various aspects of the day-to-day operations such as role, leisure activities and resource availability. Sometimes they may involve describing imaginary events or scenarios to aid in defining how procedures should be carried out or disagreements resolved, often a vision may be written in the form of "a day in the life".

In terms of the unified ontology, a nodes vision is always it's root node because the root is defined as being everything that's common across all within, and all within are defined by how they differ from that above which they inherit from. Another way of saying this is that instances are specialised versions of the classes they're based on, and classes are generalisations of all their instances.

Building Shared Vision (from The Fifth Discipline)

"In effect, the visioning process is a special type of enquiry process. It is an enquiry into the future we truly seek to create." (Senge, 1994, p. 228)

Genuine shared vision gives members of a group a sense of being part of something larger and can inspire them to extraordinary personal growth and creativity in the pursuit of this vision. Everyone is familiar with how Kennedy's vision to have a man on the moon within a decade inspired a nation to do something extraordinary. Senge further presents us with the notion of governing ideas that a vision is embedded within:

Anchoring Vision in a set of Governing Ideas

Building shared vision is actually only one piece of a larger activity: developing the "governing ideas" for the enterprise, its vision, purpose or mission, and core values. A vision not consistent with values people live by day-to-day will not only fail to inspire genuine enthusiasm, it will often foster outright cynicism. These governing ideas answer three critical questions: "What?" "Why?" and "How?"

• Vision is the "What?" - the picture of the future we seek to create.
• Purpose (or "Mission") is the "Why?" the organisation's answer to the question, "Why do we exist?" Great organisations have a larger sense of purpose that transcends providing for the needs of shareholders and employees. They seek to contribute to the world in some unique way, to add a distinctive source of value.
• Core values answer the question "How do we want to act, consistent with our mission, along the path to achieving our vision?" A company's values might include integrity, openness, honesty, freedom, equal opportunity, leanness, merit, or loyalty. They describe how the company wants life to be on a day-to-day basis, while pursuing the vision.

Taken as a unit, all three governing ideas answer the question, "What do we believe in?". When Matsushita employees recite the company creed: "To recognise our responsibility as industrialists, to foster progress, to promote the general welfare of society, and to devote ourselves to the further development of world culture, they're describing the company purpose. When they sing the company song, about "sending our goods to the people of the world, endlessly and continuously, like water gushing from a fountain," they're proclaiming the corporate vision. And when they go to in-house training programs that cover such topics as "fairness," "harmony and cooperation," "struggle for betterment," "courtesy and humility," and "gratitude," the employees are learning the company's deliberately constructed values (Matsushita, in fact, calls them its "spiritual values") (Quoted from Senge, 1994, p 223)

Shared vision rests on the foundation of the personal mastery discipline, which results in members developing their personal vision. Genuine shared vision can arise when people can discuss and compare their own personal visions to see what the overlap, the common ground is. From this a shared vision can be distilled, which serves as a unifying and inspiring force in an organisation.

Senge (p. 226) states that the principle of creative tension applies in the realm of organisational shared vision just as much as it applies to the area of personal mastery, that is, an organisation needs to foster a commitment to seeing current reality clearly, which, when contrasted with the shared vision, gives rise to creative tension within the organisation.

When it comes to the link between shared vision and systems thinking, the first thing to note is that building shared vision is a continuous process and requires leaders who can foster this process and are able to allow a diversity of views to emerge without letting conflicting visions polarise the organisation. Key is their ability to harmonise diversity and continually redefine the common ground, thus clarifying the shared vision further. Senge (p. 228) suggests we apply the reflection and enquiry skills discussed under the mental models section to deal with this challenge.

There is also a risk to shared vision that can arise from the discouragement members experience when they see the gap between the shared vision and current reality in the organisation. This problem can arise when the members lack an ability to hold creative tension, which can be addressed by encouraging personal mastery within the organisation. Apart from this, the stress and time demands of what is going on in the organisation may take away time from building shared vision, which will let the focus on the vision decline. The solution lies in making time for the vision and spending less time fighting crises. This relates to Covey's four quadrant model, whereby time spent building shared vision falls into those important but non-urgent quadrant II activities one should spend the most time doing, however the important and non-important, urgent quadrant III and IV activities tend to distract from these.

Senge concludes the shared vision section by emphasising the importance of the belief amongst stakeholders that they can change their reality and can take steps to help bring about the shared vision, in other words, whether they are systems thinkers. People who see themselves as victims reacting to change will soon become cynical about a shared vision. Systems thinkers keep learning more about how the existing behaviours and policies are creating current reality and can therefore see how they might be able to change them to create the positive future they desire.

See also

• Organic Design Vision
• Goal
• Values
• Category:Vision