The Importance Of A Clear Vision For Organizational Success And The Role Of Strategic Implementation

The role of a clear vision in organizational success

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” – has been said by the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch.

Any leader will not be happy, to have people who are less adjusting or do not prefer to leave their comfort zone. The leader will always want to have passionate, enthusiastic, risk-taking people in their team. The role of a team leader is to fix a target and then ask the team members to reach the target by developing goals (Bowen, 2018). Reaching the assigned goal or the target will be requiring vision, a vision should always be inspiring and creative. 

Developing the vision is the starting point of the strategic plan, objective in any organization. There are various key performance indicators used in an organization to ensure that they are making improvements and reaching the organizational goals, and these organizational goals are a part of the vision of any organization (Spear, 2017). According to the need, the vision of a company may change, it helps to guide the journey and have a better future. Changes in the visions and the organization goals generate risk, but the biggest risk is to persuade the employees and explain to them the reason behind the change(Aithal, 2016).

A vision should be achievable, challenging, innovative, as well as challenging. If any organization includes these approaches in its vision statement, it will surely be in an advantageous position. The advantages are mentioned below- 

1. People have a common goal and a sense of embarking on an adventure or experience together. It means that the employees are more prepared to deal with the changes, challenges, and problems that each journey might bring.
2. It signifies that a higher level of responsibility can be assigned. Employees might be more engaged and have greater control over their job. They may be trusted to lead their platform and figure out the best way to arrive because they know what they are doing and where they are going (Taiwo, and Lawal, 2016).
3. If people are aware that they may face unexplainable challenges, they will be more innovative and provide more ideas. They will be more engrossed in the event, so they will be more equipped to plot routes around and face obstacles.

Effective skills and abilities segregate effective strategic leaders from those leaders who are poor or lack strategic skills. One of the strategic skills is to motivate the employees to work diligently so that the performance of the organization can improve. Effective strategic leaders, are successful in convincing the employees to embrace high ambitions, and help the organization move forward (Roblek, and Meško, 2018). On the other hand, the leaders who have poor strategic abilities struggle to motivate people and as a result, it negatively affects the performance of the employees and the performance of the organization. 

Looking at the quotation of Jack Welch, anybody can understand how much important the vision is for any company, the importance the vision also plays an important role for the leaders, as they use this vision to encourage people. The vision of any organization denotes what is the objective of the company in the future. The aspirations of any organization can be easily understood from the vision (Mohamed, and Ahmad Murad, 2021). For instance, the vision of Avon is to understand the needs of the customers, especially the women, and accordingly satisfy them, here women mean not only from a particular region or country, it means all over the world. This is a very short vision, but anyone who will read it will clearly understand their motive, their first motive is to satisfy customers, understand their needs, and particularly work towards empowering women. The quality of a good vision is to set up high standards for employees, and looking at the vision statement of Avon, it can also be understood that they have also set a high standard for their employees, and that is to work collectively to achieve the goal. Alcoa, an aluminium manufacturing company is believed to have one of the best and clear visions, the vision states that- the company wants to be one of the best companies, in the eyes of its customers, communities, shareholders, and society. The aspirations of the company are clear, and the leaders also feel that they can use the vision to motivate their employees so that they become the best in the world. 

The importance of a well-crafted vision statement

Below is an example of a few of the best vision statements of some world-renowned companies-

Avon

The vision of Avon is to understand the needs of the customers, especially the women, and accordingly satisfy them

Google

To create a perfect search engine.

Proctor and Gamble

To be identified as one of the best consumer product companies in the world.

Thus, from the table above it could be understood, the importance of a clear vision and how it helps the company to succeed in the future and meet its aspirations

For any business whether small or big, it is mandatory to have a clear vision statement, as it is critical for their success, it gives a clear direction where the company is moving, and if by any chance the company is facing any obstacle, they can handle it efficiently so that the meaning of their vision statement is not diminished. In contemporary times, the situation is continuously changing, and along with that the organizations also need to evolve themselves to suit the needs and survive in the market. For that they need to change their visual statement accordingly, if they do not do so, then the organization will become stagnant. The vision statement speaks a lot about a company, so it must be ensured that the changes in it are minimum, otherwise, it can negatively affect the image of the company (Akter, 2021). An organization can add, or morph their vision statement as they grow, the leaders, employees, and the other stakeholders responsible for a company’s development should be reviewing the company’s vision, to keep it updated. It can be said that every once or thrice in a year the vision statement can be changed, that also depending on the needs. A vision statement should only be changed, if it is required, otherwise it should be kept the same. Altering the vision statement often might negatively affect the company (Hitt, Ireland, and Hoskisson, 2016), and everybody else who is associated with the company.  

Every organization has a vision, but if any organization does not have a clear vision for the future, and even if they do not have the desire to make changes, these organizations will face a lot of obscurity in the future. A vision should be achievable, challenging, innovative, as well as challenging. If any organization includes these approaches in its vision statement, it will surely be in an advantageous position. For any business whether small or big, it is mandatory to have a clear vision statement, as it is critical for their success, it gives a clear direction where the company is moving, and if by any chance the company is facing any obstacle, they can handle it efficiently so that the meaning of their vision statement is not diminished. In contemporary times, the situation is continuously changing, and along with that the organizations also need to evolve themselves to suit the needs and survive in the market. For that they need to change their visual statement accordingly, if they do not do so, then the organization will become stagnant. To successfully implement vision, strategic implementation is important. And so strategic implementation is vital and the importance of it has been discussed in detail in the following paragraphs.

The need for periodic review and potential changes to the vision statement

There are various key performance indicators used in an organization to ensure that they are making improvements and reaching the organizational goals, and these organizational goals are a part of the vision of any organization. According to the need, the vision of a company may change but with proper strategy, it helps to guide the journey and have a better future. Changes in the visions and the organization goals generate risk, but the biggest risk is to persuade the employees and explain to them the reason behind the change (Bowen, S.A., 2018). The risk can be reduced with proper implementation of strategic plan.

The implementation stage is regarded as the most difficult stage in the process of strategic management because it involves a systematic step, resource, people. If these things are not properly aligned during change within an organization, then there will high chance that the organization will fail (Morden, 2016). A poorly implemented strategic plan will lead to chaos, confusion, conflict, and this might make the organization lose its image and competitive advantage in the market. It is very important to understand how to implement the strategies so that the leaders and the managers can avoid difficulties and successfully implement the firm strategies.

Effective skills and abilities re required to implement plan successfully, and to make the implementation plan successful, the role of efficient strategic leaders is important, because poor strategic leaders will be not able to effectively implement strategic plan affecting organization. Implementing proper plan not only affects the organization, but employees in a positive way. Hence implementation is the most difficult stage in strategic management (Roblek, and Meško, 2018).

The implementation of the strategic plan is the execution of strategies and plans. These strategies help the organization to achieve long-term goals, in short, this is a process through which an organization develops itself. The strategic implementation uses and integrates new processes into the structure of an organization (Berisha Qehaja, Kutllovci, and Shiroka Pula, 2017). This makes sure that the people, resources, and every component of the organization follow these strategies. It can prove to be the main driving force in a company, especially in the competitive market. Before implementing the new strategy in business, the organization must recognize its visions, and accordingly implement the strategy. This can only be done with the help of proper market as well as organizational research (Lynch, 2018). The analysis considers all the aspects of the business. Thus, all these things need to be considered before the successful implementation of the strategic plan. 

The risks associated with changing a company’s vision statement

A proper structure is important in strategic planning, and then only can an organization succeed. The different parts in an organization are linked together, which means the leaders, managers, employees of varied positions and departments are all included in this. For the planning, needs to be successful it is important that the leaders, employees are all committed, efficient, and determined so that they can convert the purpose into a result (Johnson et al., 2020). Before strategic implementation can succeed, organizations need to have implemented a proper structure. This means that different parts of the organization are linked together. Relationships between different positions, roles, and departments are transparent (Fuertes et al., 2020). Employees and leaders need to be committed, determined, and efficient to convert purpose into results (Özleblebici, and Çetin, 2015). Strategic implementation is important, as it helps the organization to achieve bigger goals. To make substantial improvement, the processes and the behavior needs to be adopted universally. 

Moreover, strategic implementation is important, because it involves actions rather than words. It shows the company and teams that the strategies that has been discussed are achievable, if implemented properly. It is a great tool for developing team, and the company as a whole and can only be successful if everybody engages themselves in it. The future of any company depends on strategic implementation and so the importance of this cannot be denied or underestimated. Every company should always be focusing on properly implementing strategy, to ensure their competitive advantage in the market, especially in the contemporary times when competition is high.

Thus, this point can be concluded by saying that the implementation of the strategic plan is the execution of strategies and plans. These strategies help the organization to achieve long-term goals, in short, this is a process through which an organization develops itself. Before strategic implementation can succeed, organizations need to have implemented a proper structure. This means that different parts of the organization are linked together. Relationships between different positions, roles, and departments are transparent (Jabbar, and Hussein, 2017). Employees and leaders need to be committed, determined, and efficient to convert purpose into results. Strategic implementation is important, as it helps the organization to achieve bigger goals.

Reference

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Bowen, S.A., 2018. Mission and vision. The international encyclopedia of strategic communication, pp.1-9.

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Lynch, R., 2018. Strategic management. Pearson UK.

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