Managing a Large Scale Change

An organization’s vision and how it is communicated and implemented touch the “business heart” of the daily operations of an organization and play a noteworthy role in successful change. In order to fully understand the importance of linking a company’s vision and change, let’s explore three areas that contribute to the understanding of a company’s business vision: core values, core purpose, and visionary goals.

Core Values

Core values are four or five values that are central to a business organization. They reflect the deeply held ideals of the organization and are independent of the current industry environment and management fads.

Core values that business organizations might employ include:

· Excellent customer service

· Pioneering technology

· Creativity

· Integrity

· Social responsibility.

Core Purpose

· Core purpose is the reason that the business organization exists. This purpose is expressed in a carefully formulated mission statement. The core purpose is an idealistic reason for being.

Visionary Goals

· Visionary goals are the lofty objective that the firm’s management decides to pursue.

Core values, core purpose, and visionary goals all contribute a necessary element of a company’s business vision.

A well-crafted vision provides a solid basis for an organization’s culture and its purpose for change. If the vision isn’t right, then it is extremely difficult to understand why a company needs to change and to diagnose what must change within the company. Potential for resistance to change increases, and implementing change becomes more challenging to manage effectively within an organization.

Understanding core values, core purpose, and visionary goals leads to a company/business vision that defines the firm as it moves forward. The organization is then able to integrate vision with change successfully, which is paramount in an exponentially changing business environment.

2. Capturing the Vision

Vision can be a key driver for organizational change. But what makes a good vision statement? Consider the components suggested in the following video:

https://youtu.be/0hdTz042xG

Capturing an effective vision statement for an organization requires organizational leadership to examine the attributes of a vision statement, develop the story communicated by the vision, and consider the culture and structure of the organization.

Vision Attributes:

A vision statement must incorporate the following attributes:

· Statement of purpose

· Ideal future

· Desired future

· Future accomplishments.

These attributes are discussed in greater depth by Dr. John Kotter: https://youtu.be/yA1a0khcuKo

Vision as stories:

Vision stories use rich imagery and descriptions to portray the organization’s future aspirations in a way that is relatable and fuels action and change. Steps needed to develop a vision story narrative include (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin, 2016):

1. Becoming informed

2. Visiting the future

3. Creating the story (innovation, in many cases) (p. 175):

· Describe the actors, events, actions, and consequences

· What are the key messages and themes?

· What’s happening in the marketplace?

· How are staff providing services and interacting with customers?

· What is the mood—what are people experiencing and feeling?

4. Deploying the vision.

Organizational Culture:

The context and culture of an organization impact its ability to implement and sustain visionary change (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin, 2016).

· Rigid organizations are hierarchical and lack openness to change.

· Bold organizations are organic and accepting of change.

· Over-managed organizations resist change and defer to what has worked in the past.

· Liberated organizations channel resources toward change and accept and promote change.

Think about the process by which visions emerge. How are they crafted and fine-tuned by change? Why do they fail? Failure can result from the vision being too specific, vague, unrealistic (keeping them achievable is paramount), complex, or irrelevant.

Finally, spend some time thinking about the link between vision and change by asking these three questions:

· Does vision drive change or emerge during change?

· Does vision help or hinder change?

· Is vision an attribute of strong leaders or the organizations they come from?

Understanding these important concepts and ideas will greatly enrich your understanding of a company’s vision and its link to change.

A company’s vision is closely linked to its ability to change and, in some cases, its requirement to change. Change just doesn’t happen serendipitously; it happens when a company’s vision successfully adapts to change.