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Creating Vision and Strategic Direction

Burt Rutan was a teenager when President John F. Kennedy set for NASA
a clear and visionary goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the
decade. In July of 1969, he watched along with millions around the world
as that vision became a reality. Nearly 40 years later, Rutan has his own

ambitious vision: to make human space flight as routine as airplane travel.
Rutan has pulled off extraordinary accomplishments by bucking conventional
wisdom about aerodynamics and inspiring people to do things differently. In
the 1980s, his company, Scaled Composites, gained international acclaim for
Voyager, a twin-engine propeller plane that completed his vision for the fi rst

nonstop flight around the world without refueling. But when Rutan fi rst an-
nounced to his 125 or so employees his vision of building a space craft, chief
engineer Michael Gionta recalls that it was overwhelming. “We had done low-

speed subsonic flight for 17 years. What did we know about going to space?”
But the vision was so powerful and energizing that every single employee at
Scaled Composites wanted a chance to contribute to the space project.
In October of 2004, SpaceShipOne landed in the Mojave Desert after
having carried humans to space twice within a week, earning its owners the
$10 million Ansari-X prize, which was set up to encourage non–government-

funded development of manned space travel. It marked the first time a pri-
vate business successfully launched humans into space. Space fanatic Paul
Allen backed the original spacecraft, setting up a separate company called
Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which owns the technology. Virgin Atlantic’s
Richard Branson has since contracted with the company to move to the next
step of producing a space airliner, called Virgin Galactic, for which tickets
have already gone on sale.
SpaceShipOne is a small step, and there are significant hurdles to over-

come before routine space travel becomes a reality. But Rutan’s passion for
the vision is infectious, and the excitement generated by the Ansari-X prize
may open the door to an entire space tourism industry and change the way
we think about the universe. 1
One of the most important functions of a leader is to articulate and com-
municate a compelling vision that will motivate and energize people toward
the future. The vision of routine space travel is out of the ordinary, but so was
Kennedy’s idea of putting a man on the moon in 1961. Both illustrate how
inspiring and energizing an idealistic vision can be. Good leaders are always
looking forward, setting a course for the future and getting everyone moving
in the same direction. Lorraine Monroe, former principal of the renowned
Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem and founder of the Lorraine Monroe
Leadership Institute, refers to a leader as “the drum major, the person who
keeps a vision in front of people and reminds them of what they’re about.”
People naturally “gravitate toward leaders who have a vision,” Monroe
says. “When people see that you love your work, they want to catch your
energy.” 2
Follower motivation and energy are crucial to the success of any endeavor;
the role of leadership is to focus everyone’s energy on the same path. At
City Bank, the predecessor of Citigroup, leaders energized employees with
a vision of becoming “the most powerful, the most serviceable, the most

far-reaching world financial institution that has ever been.” That vision, fi rst
articulated in 1915 by a small regional bank, motivated and inspired gen-
erations of employees until it was eventually achieved. 3

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