Vision: the Key to a Happy and Productive Company
Discover the simple way to make your employees less productive and resentful of your management: just don’t worry about the vision!
I’ve been writing a lot about visions and their importance recently — and that’s not about to stop. But perhaps it’s worth taking a step back and asking ourselves: why is it important to have a (good!) vision?
There is a personal satisfaction that comes from knowing that everything you do is grounded in a long-term plan and generally makes sense. That’s the feeling of jigsaw pieces falling in place, the deep satisfaction of order triumphing over chaos.
But perhaps that’s just me? So let’s explore other, more tangible benefits of a great vision.
In her presentation The Scaling of Vision, Sheryl Sandberg says:
[Leadership] I think, is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management teaches you is possible. With management and with authority and with structures all businesses and organizations have, you can get people to do things. You work for me, I ask you to do A, you’re likely to do A. But while you can get compliance, you can’t get passion.
I would love nothing more than for this to be true because that would make me, as a product leader, into an artist. How cool would that be? But while I agree that you need more than management to get people passionate, I don’t think what you need is an art, and indeed presenting it this way makes leadership seem way more arcane and mysterious than it really is. You get passion when your employees know that their work contributes to a goal they believe in.
A better quote to understand the difference between management and leadership is to be found in Seth Godin’s Tribes¹:
Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done. Burger King franchises hire managers. They know exactly what they need to deliver and they are given resources to do it at low cost. Managers manage a process they’ve seen before, and they react to the outside world, striving to make that process as fast and as cheap as possible.
Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change that you believe in.
“Creating change that you believe in.” This is the vision: a future state in which you believe, for which you will fight. That will get people passionate. Let’s break down what a good vision will bring: motivation, autonomy, focus, productivity, and happiness.
Motivation
I read a fascinating quote from a NASA custodian interviewed at the peak of the Apollo frenzy in the 1960s. This person said: “I’m not mopping floors, I’m putting a man on the moon.”²
Doing anything meaningful is bound to involve lots of harrowing or just menial tasks. It is hard to do those in a vacuum! But if each task is clearly framed as a stepping stone to some grand vision, in which you believe, the hardest can become a breeze. Haven’t we all had the experience of working tirelessly, not counting hours, and forgetting to stop to eat because we were building something awesome? And that can be in a professional or personal setting. Sports aficionados will run tens of miles, climb the highest mountains, and do all sorts of other unnatural things just for the accomplishment. That’s what a good vision brings. And maybe you are the person who is able to be stirred into action by the prospect of increasing sales or raising a share price — and I won’t judge you for it — but for most of us something bigger and more tangible, such as putting a person on the moon, is more efficient.
Autonomy
Who doesn’t love being micro-managed? Isn’t it reassuring to always feel the warmth of your manager’s breath on your shoulder? Don’t you feel safe knowing that every one of your clicks is getting examined in real-time by someone in a position of authority?
I’m joking, of course; I don’t think anybody likes that. Actually, most micro-managers I met didn’t like micro-managing people either! But when you don’t have a clear picture of where you’re going — or if you can’t express it properly — there is no way for your staff to know, day to day, which path they should be taking. As a manager, you will need to scrutinize every decision your employees take and tell them that, actually, they should have done A rather than B, when they had no rationale to know that by themselves.
On the other hand, if you are able to formulate and communicate a good vision, your teams will be able to make lots of decisions by themselves. They are smart people after all, otherwise you wouldn’t have hired them! That doesn’t mean that there will be no need for management nor that there will never be a situation where the right path is ambiguous: there will be plenty of those. But for the most part, your staff will be empowered and will be able to do their best, autonomously. You, the manager, will have time for tasks that actually bring value: laying out the next steps in your strategy. The best part is that this increases productivity AND happiness, with employees being treated as adults, being able to do their best work, and managers not having to second-guess mundane decisions all day long.
Focus
In “The Vision-Driven Leader,” author Michael Hyatt says that his own company’s vision had the following sentence: “We employ a rigorous decision-making process to weigh necessary investment against our core ideology and projected ROI. As a result, we routinely say no to distractions masquerading as opportunities.”³
Well, duh. Who would say the opposite? Who would enshrine in their vision the fact that they spend lots of time pursuing “distractions masquerading as opportunities”? This much is obvious. The question is: How do you distinguish distraction from opportunity? And the answer, as often, is: having a good vision.
As for individual tasks, you can ask yourself for broader projects whether or not they will further your vision. Acquisitions, new product launches, geographic expansions: all can be weighted against your vision. On the other hand, how do you assess something like an acquisition without one? You could consider whether you would be making a return on your investment, but that’s definitely not the whole picture since many companies out there are undervalued; however, only a select few would make sense to be folded into your own business.
Productivity and happiness
Motivation, autonomy, and focus are just components of productivity. The summary is that a good vision will make your organization and its people productive. By pulling on the same rope and going in the same direction, you can do most of the resources at your disposal and go the furthest. And while some methods to gain productivity (at least temporarily) may be detrimental to your employees’ overall well-being (well hello there, short or inexistent maternity leaves, long hours, short vacations, and other grueling conditions), working towards a shared vision will increase productivity and happiness. Anything can be dispiriting if it is in the service of something that’s contrary to your values; anything can be inspiring if you believe in what it will accomplish.
In Into Thin Air, John Krakauer quotes one of his fellow Everest hopefuls as saying: “When I left the military, I sort of lost my way. […] My marriage fell apart. All I could see was this long dark tunnel closing in, ending in infirmity, old age, and death. Then I started to climb, and the sport provided most of what had been missing for me in civvy street — the challenge, the camaraderie, the sense of mission.”⁴
What if you could get this and, as a bonus, without having to either wage war or put your life in danger in a frigid wasteland? That would be swell, wouldn’t it? That’s what working for a company with a great vision will bring you.
Wrapping up
Employees at a company with a great vision, one they believe in, will have a sense of purpose in everything they do. They will want to fight to make it happen; they will be able to make the right decisions day to day and avoid distractions, increasing productivity at the same time as happiness. Why wouldn’t one want that for their staff? Why would one want to work for a company without such purpose?
So, ask yourself: how good is your vision? Is it up to the task of motivating your troops and stirring them into action until success is the only possible outcome?
¹ Godin, Seth. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, 2008.
³ Hyatt, Michael. The Vision Driven Leader: 10 Questions to Focus Your Efforts, Energize Your Team, and Scale Your Business, 2020.
⁴ Krakauer, John. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, 1997.
About me
I’m a product manager, 500 Startups alumnus, and consultant.
I’m head of product at a growth company and consult on product management in large companies and startups alike.
The rest of the time, I read random books and cook vast amounts of food.
Connect with me through my website, Medium, and LinkedIn.
