Hello! I hope you’re well today. I wanted to respond to something I read this morning that reminded me of how important commitment to the vision and process is in any successful organization.

10 years ago Jim Collins wrote the following.

Executives spend too much time drafting, wordsmithing, and redrafting vision statements, mission statements, values statements, purpose statements, aspiration statements, and so on. They spend nowhere near enough time trying to align their organizations with the values and visions already in place.

Studying and working closely with some of the world’s most visionary organizations has made it clear that they concentrate primarily on the process of alignment, not on crafting the perfect “statement.” Not that it is a waste of time to think through fundamental questions like, “What are our core values? What is our fundamental reason for existence? What do we aspire to achieve and become?” Indeed, these are very important questions—questions that get at the “vision” of the organization.

Yet vision is one of the least understood-and most overused-terms in the language. Vision is simply a combination of three basic elements: (1) an organization’s fundamental reason for existence beyond just making money (often called its mission or purpose), (2) its timeless unchanging core values, and (3) huge and audacious—but ultimately achievable—aspirations for its own future (I like to call these BHAGs, or Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Of these, the most important to great, enduring organizations are its core values.

Well, 1o years later things haven’t changed. I agree with Jim 100% So many leaders get stuck with the perfect terminology, catch phrase and vision statement instead of laboring in the process to see it actually happen.

What do I mean? Simple, executives and leaders tend to lock themselves in board rooms until with “one voice” they agree on the language they think will change the future and bring greater success to the organization. The problem is they spend 90% of their time on the process of sounding good and 10% of their time on how it will actually work.

The reality is it won’t work unless their is a commitment to alignment, process and evaluation! The easy part is creating the language and the difficult part is finding the best way to make it happen.

For me the process is so much more fun. That’s why I love these thoughts from Jim Collins.