How to build a vivid vision and grow the people who execute it

Executive overview

Most company vision statements fail because they're written by committee — every word voted on, every edge sanded off. The result is something no one believes in and no one leaves over.

A vivid vision is a four-to-five page document written by the CEO alone, describing exactly how the company looks, acts, and feels three years from now. It should be polarising enough that some people quit after hearing it.

The vision alone is not enough. CEOs also need to grow people's skills, confidence, and connections so teams become self-managing and can execute without constant oversight.

A clear vivid vision plus systematically grown leadership skills removes the need to manage people at all.

Why most vision processes fail

• Mission statements written by group consensus produce watered-down sentences no one believes
• Vision must be slightly polarising — if no one disagrees, it has no direction
• Three years is the right horizon: one year looks too similar to today; beyond three, plans become meaningless
• The CEO must author the document, not crowdsource it — listening to the market is fine, but the final vision stays intact
• Rolling out a vivid vision to 100 employees caused 15% to quit; two years later that company ranked second-best to work for in Western Canada

The vision stack

• Vivid vision: three-year written description of every business area — culture, metrics, customers, leadership, core values
• BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal): 20-to-30-year aspiration that sounds impossible from outside but plausible from inside — Microsoft's "a computer on every desktop", Nike's "crush Adidas"
• Core purpose: the Simon Sinek "Start With Why" layer
• These three layers align and reinforce each other; the vivid vision makes them concrete for every employee

Growing people as the execution engine

• Most CEOs train employees on what to do; the higher leverage is training them how to think, delegate, coach, and lead
• Managers who can run a $10M unit often can't scale to $40M or $80M without new skills — grow them or replace them constantly
• At 1-800-GOT-JUNK: grew from 14 to 3,100 employees and $2M to $106M revenue in six years by investing in people's skills
• Gen Y employees prioritise core purpose alignment first, career growth second — skill development retains them
• Leaders should spend roughly 50% of time growing people, not doing work that could be delegated

The 12 core leadership skills

1. Situational leadership
2. Coaching
3. Delegation
4. Time management
5. Interviewing
6. Running effective meetings
7. Classroom teaching
8. One-on-one meetings
9. Email management
10. Executing on vision
11. Handling conflict
12. (Delegation — listed twice; treat as a reinforced priority)

Making training spread virally

• Employees earn bronze, silver, or gold certification on each skill
• A gold-certified employee can certify anyone else in that skill — a payroll clerk can certify the CMO
• A gold in coaching allows certifying others on any skill where the coach holds at least a bronze
• Pay raises and promotions require certification at defined levels — this creates internal demand
• Busts silos: a VP from IT gets certified by a marketing assistant; functional boundaries dissolve
• Pre-test (which they fail) → teach with video, reading, and practice → post-test (which they pass) → retention exam three months later

Effective classroom teaching principles

• If you can't design the training program on a post-it note, the concept isn't clear enough
• People learn auditorily, visually, and kinaesthetically — every session must use all three
• The learner controls the environment: connect the skill to what they care about or they won't engage
• Attach training to the learner's own goals (promotion, career growth) to create motivation