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CHAPTER 13: CREATING VISION AND STRATEGIC DIRECTION 389

Exhibit 13.1 The Domain of Strategic Leadership

Vision
Mission
Strategy

Architecture for alignment
and implementation

Leadership Vision
A vision can be thought of as a dream for the future. Stanford R. Ovshinsky spent
40 years pursuing his dream of making giant sheets of thin photovoltaic
material that can convert sunlight to electricity, and making them
Go to Leader’s Self-Insight 13.1 on page 390
cheaply enough that solar can compete with fossil fuels. “I said Action Memo
we were going to make it by the mile,” the 84-year-old Ovshinsky and answer the questions to learn where
says. “Nobody believed me [at fi rst], not even in my own company.” you stand with respect to a personal vision.
Today, Energy Conversion Devices uses a mammoth machine the size

of a football field to spool out long thin sheets of solar material that is
used on the roofs of homes and businesses. Even running at full capac-
ity, the factory can’t keep up with the orders. 9
A vision is also more than a dream—it is an ambitious view of the future that
everyone involved can believe in, one that can realistically be achieved, yet one
that offers a future that is better in important ways than what now exists. For
organizations, a vision is an attractive, ideal future that is credible yet not readily Vision
Vision
an attractive, ideal future
attainable. In the 1950s, Sony Corporation wanted to “[b]ecome the company an attractive, ideal future
that is credible yet not readily
that is credible yet not readily
most known for changing the worldwide poor-quality image of Japanese prod-
attainable
attainable
ucts.” Since that time, Japanese companies have become known for quality, but
10

in the 1950s this was a highly ambitious goal that fired people’s imaginations and
sense of national pride. Sometimes, visions are brief, compelling, and slogan-like,
easily communicated to and understood by everyone in the organization. For
example, Coca-Cola’s “A Coke within arm’s reach of everyone on the planet”
and Komatsu’s “Encircle Caterpillar” serve to motivate all employees. William
Wrigley Jr., the fourth-generation leader of Wm. R. Wrigley, Jr. Company, crafted
the slogan, “Wrigley brands woven into the fabric of everyday life around the
world,” to capture the company’s vision of moving beyond chewing gum such
as Juicy Fruit to become a broader food and confectionery company competitive
with Europe’s Cadbury Schweppes. 11
Exhibit 13.2 lists a few more brief vision statements that let people know where
the organization wants to go in the future. Not all successful organizations have
such short, easily communicated slogans, but their visions are powerful because
leaders paint a compelling picture of where the organization wants to go. The vi-
sion expressed by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I Have a Dream”
speech is a good example of how leaders paint a vision in words. King articulated
a vision of racial harmony, where discrimination was nonexistent, and he conveyed
the confi dence and conviction that his vision would someday be achieved.