1 Visioning and Corporate Governance Presentation to FMI/CGA/CMA PD Event February 3, 2004 Gordon S. Gunn, CA, CISA, CMC Victoria, BC The real voyage

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Visioning and Corporate Governance

Presentation toFMI/CGA/CMA PD Event

February 3, 2004Gordon S. Gunn, CA, CISA, CMC

Victoria, BC

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes

- Marcel Proust

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Agenda

• A Model of Corporate Governance

• Vision and Visioning– Importance of Vision– Hoover’s Vision

• Exploration• Essence

– Paradoxes for the Visionary– The Visionary Organization

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A Model of Corporate Governance

• Governance– “the processes and structures that an

organization uses to direct and manage its operations and program activities.”

– “the structures, functions (responsibilities), processes (practices) and organizational traditions that the board of an organization uses to ensure accomplishment of its organizational mission. These determine how power is exercised, how decisions are taken, how stakeholders have their say and how decision-makers are held to account.”

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• Key Governance Responsibilities– Stewardship

• Assume ownership of the organization and ensure its survives and grows

– Vision• Define a vision• Develop the goals and strategies that ensure that the

vision is achieved

– Integrity• Set the “Tone at the Top” and represent the

shareholders/stakeholders/members

A Model of Corporate Governance

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Vision and Visioning

• So, what is a Vision?• What are the attributes of a Visionary?• Are we born a Visionary or is it something

we can learn?

Paradox of the Visionary

The more you are right, the more wrong you will be

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Vision and Visioning

• Vision:– Merriam Webster

• The act or power of imagination• Mode of seeing or conceiving• Unusual discernment or foresight

– “An informed and forward-thinking statement of purpose” Gary Hoover

• Visioning– The action of defining a vision

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision - Ayn Rand

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Vision and Visioning (cont)

• Powerful Visions

10:50

1963 - I have a dream

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Vision and Visioning (cont)

• Applicability - The ability to be visionary is equally applicable to:– An individual;– A family, a team, a group– An enterprise/organization– A nation– Humanity

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The Importance of Vision

• Great enterprises succeed because:– They see things that others do not see– They ask questions that others do not

ask– They chart their own course, combining

insights and strategies into a blueprint for a uniquely focused enterprise

Fail to build your own future, and someone is going to build one for you – Gary Hoover

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Hoover’s Vision

• Hoover’s Vision – Original Thinking for Business Success – Gary Hoover

• Three keys to success:– Exploration:Exploration: Observing and understanding

other people and how their needs, desires, interests, values and tastes change over time

– EssenceEssence: Serving other people by making their lives better

– ExecutionExecution: Developing a style that expresses your own dreams and passions even as it serves the needs of others

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Exploration

• Curiosity– Innovation starts with curiosity – asking, looking, seeking– Have an open, absorbent, ready mind– The ability to observe is fundamental– Get back to a child-like sense of wonder

• The ability and willingness to be amazed

– Illustration• What mathematical formula is approximated by the value of

3.14…?• What value is approximated by the value of 1.6181?• The Divine Proportion (Phi) (see

http://evolutionoftruth.com/goldensection/body.htm )

http://evolutionoftruth.com/goldensection/body.htm

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Exploration (cont)

• Ponder first, act later• Get into the information flow:

– Let information flow through you like a river, not a pond

– Take notes– Pass the info on to at least one person who

might find it interesting– Be a two-way info conduit– We are at our strongest when we are learning

and at the same time sharing what we know

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Exploration (cont)

• Technique– Within your personal or professional life,

seek out eccentrics – people who are a little different – who may have an obsession or passion

– Take them to lunch - Find out what drives their passion

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is going - Wayne Gretsky

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Exploration (cont)

• Reduce complexity– Separate the meaningful from the meaningless– Understanding comes from focusing on what is

important and linking it together with other information

– The key is to know 5 things:• Know what matters• Know what ties together• Know where to look for information• Know how to analyze information• Know how this info relates to you, your job, project,

personal goals, enterprise.

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Exploration (cont)

• Technique– When reading a book, try the following:

• Read the cover and inside jacket• Look at the copyright page to see when the book was

written• Read “About the Author” to see where they are coming from• Read the Table of Contents and think about what is says

about the book• Read the 1st paragraphs of the 1st chapter and the last

paragraphs of the last. If this is not enough to understand the premise of the book, read the first paragraph of each chapter.

• Look for tables, charts, maps and graphs. Study each and see what conclusions you can reach.

• Scan the index for people, places and subjects that you already know something about, and which will therefore help you weave the book into your mind.

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Exploration (cont)

• Technique– At the end of every day, ask yourself

“What did I learn today?” Write it down!

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Exploration (cont)

• Comprehensive thinking:– Bring everything we learn into a unified body of

understanding– Work with word clusters – individual words can

have inexact meanings– Words stand for ideas, concepts & emotions– Word clusters are words that have overlapping,

related meanings– Example: To be a successful leader, we must

be – dedicated, committed, obsessed, focuses, single-minded, unwavering, unstoppable, self-invested, all-on-the-line.

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Exploration (cont)

• Connecting what you know:– Assume that every fact relates somehow

to your own success:• 10% of facts have clear connections• 40% have no connections• 50% have hidden connections

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Exploration (cont)

• Technique:– Think of your industry as a board game:

• What are the chance cards?• What are the penalties?• Who are the players?• What are the defining moves?• Where is Boardwalk on your board?

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Exploration (cont)

• Look for patterns• Chains – understand the chain that the

thing you are studying is part of• Time chain – embryo, baby, child,

teenager, adult, senior citizen, deceased.• Multiple-dimensions

– Every entity is part of multiple groups or chains• Common chains – Time, age, path, price, hierarchy,

classification, quality

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Exploration (cont)

• Redefine and reclassify your world– Name the seven continents?– What is the largest string instrument in an

orchestra?• Great minds break through definitions that

aren’t right• Railroads lost out to truckers because they

saw themselves as railroads rather than as freight transportation companies

• If you start your search for understandings with bad definitions and classifications, you will not hope to learn

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Exploration (cont)

• The Expected World:– All of us tend to think in familiar channels

(ruts)– We seldom venture outside our own

industries– If you are not looking around, you’re not

likely to see much– Nothing has ever been discovered by

looking in the same place and the same way as everyone else.

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Exploration (cont)

• Technique:– Go to your favourite bookstore and buy $100

worth of magazines or books you’ve never read before

– Focus on a subject you’ve been curious about but never really pursued.

– Write a summary of what you have learned– Or, research a famous person in history. Who

were their friends, enemy’s, competition, students and teachers? What were their passions?

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Exploration (cont)

• Technique– List all of the professional journals and trade publications

you read semi-regularly– Compare the list against the following:

• Agriculture

• Banking/Finance

• Construction

• Education

• Government

• Hospitality

• Information Technology

• Utilities/Power/Fuel

• Media/Entertainment

• Medicine/Health Care

• Military

• Retail Sales

• Telecommunications

• Trade

• Transportation

These 15 industry groups account for >50% of GDP. How many of these groups are represented on your list? The range of experience you are

exposing yourself to is defined through media choices. The narrower the range, the less ready you are for change.

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Exploration (cont)

• The role of serendipity – as we explore, leave our emotions and biases behind

• Examples – George de Mestral’s walk in the woods led to

the development of velcro– Percy Spencer’s melted Hershey bar while

working in the microwave labs at Raytheon led to the microwave oven

– Pierre Omidyar’s fiancee’s PEZ collection led him to start eBay.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see - Henry David Thoreau

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Exploration (cont)

• Seeing what others do not– Be skeptical– Look behind the headlines– Look for lessons that can be

transplanted– Step outside your own world and look at

what might appear to be odd from other points of view

Learn to see, and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision - Carlos Castaneda

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Exploration (cont)

• Learning from and Living with Paradoxes– Understanding the future, first and foremost,

comes from looking at the past– Understanding the world depends on an

understanding of our own town, our own neighbourhood

– Successful organizations hold true to a consistent essence. They must also adapt to the changing needs of their customers and new technologies. Knowing what to change and what not to change are at the core of leadership.

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Exploration (cont)

• Looking through different lenses– Visionaries must confront the

“impossible”– The more points of view, the better– The more specialized we become, the

greater our need for leaders who can help bring unity to our efforts

– Breakthroughs are usually made by people with a broad view of the world

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Exploration (cont)

• Techniques:– Study ideas you disagree with strongly– Understand the “enemy” better than they

understand themselves– Put yourself in the shoes of your

customer regularly– See things in their normal context, how

the customers see them.

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Exploration (cont)

• Looking for gaps and vacancies– Find a need and fill it– Continually search for new ways to

serve people better– Look at thing that are working, that are

popular. How can they be adapted to your organization?

– Look for best practices.

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Exploration (cont)

• Why History Matters– The importance of watching trends– Example – implications of increasing

participation of women in the workforce on retail markets

– Example – implications of growth of the suburbs for Sears

– Implications of the baby boom – people do important things at predictable points in time

• Dramatic expansion of four key industries: healthcare, education, travel and financial services

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Exploration (cont)

• Why History Matters– Implications of increasing population

diversification– Implications of Diversity of Avocations

and Interests– Separate what is changing from what is

not changing.

The further backward you look, the further forward you can see - Winston Churchill.

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Exploration (cont)

• Techniques– Seeking patterns through time

• In what direction is change taking place?• At what rate of change taking place?• Is the rate of change constant, accelerating

or declining?

– Recycle old ideas• The PT Cruiser, the Ford Mustang, Snow

White are examples of recycling of old ideas that were successful.

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Exploration (cont)

• Why Geography Matters– Everything happens in time and space– The first question we often ask a new

acquaintance is “Where are you from?” or “Where did you grow up?”

– Geography suggests a culture, history, ethnicity, a way of life.

– Knowing “where other folks are coming from” is critical.

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Exploration (cont)

• Seeing the World through Foreign Eyes– We are all foreigners to someone– Travel is a great opportunity to absorb

new ideas– No substitute for being there

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Exploration (cont)

• Technique– When traveling, make the place your

own. Don’t follow the same path as everyone else.

– What is the most striking thing about this place?

– What seems odd?– How is it the same as home?

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Exploration (cont)

• Technique– Conduct research into some of the

leading futurists (e.g., Frank Ogden, Faith Popcorn, Nostradamus)

– Identify the craziest ideas they are talking about

– Consider how those crazy ideas might become part of your future

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Exploration (cont)

• Role of Technology– Two key trends:

• Leapfrogging• Convergence

• When you study technology, consider three questions:– What is it capable of doing?– What should it be able to do?– What it might stumble onto?

• Technology should make someone’s life easier, more productive, more interesting or more fun.

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Exploration (cont)

• In the Fools Box– One approach to exploring the future is to ask questions

about problems and solutions. Sometimes, we don’t know the problem or the solution, only the questions.

– In the Fools Box, you build questions into your organization. This is how you are able to live in the present and the future. You embed contradictions in your organization by being certain that someone inside it is living outside it.

– In the Fools Box, constraints must be relaxed so that the truth may be spoken without fear of retribution.

– The Fool must be able to say the sky is falling and be wrong and look ridiculous and not be punished for doing so.

– The Fool can destabilize on a regular basis everything your organization thinks about itself.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it – George Bernard Shaw

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Essence

• The Power of Vision– Vision is “an informed and forward-thinking

statement of purpose” that tells us why an organization exists and what it is trying to accomplish.

– A vision should be informed, based upon an understanding of the world around us.

– Vision should reflect what you expect and hope your organization will become.

– A Vision should be highly customized, not generic. There is no standard vision formula.

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Essence (cont)

• The Power of Vision– A Vision should reflect the organization’s

personality and culture– A Vision should reflect “core values”– A fundamental element in the “ticking clock” of

a visionary company is a core ideology—core values and sense of purpose beyond just making money—that guides and inspires people throughout the organization and remains relatively fixed for long periods of time.

Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world - Joel A. Barker

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Essence (cont)

• Exercise – which of the following vision statements belong to:

To become a world-class marine transportation system that is

customer-focused and financially viable.

To be the most efficient and affordable, customer-focused ferry operator in the world.

Washington State Ferries Washington State Ferries

BC Ferries BC Ferries

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Essence (cont)


___________ will build on the strength of its people – students, faculty, staff

and alumni – to strengthen our position

among the best ________ in Canada, recognized for

excellence in teaching, learning, research, artistic

creativity, professional practice and service to the

community.

Royal Roads University Royal Roads University

To excel at the provision of continuous learning for

people in the workplace. ____________ is a comprehensive

educational institution providing our community

with access to the knowledge and skills relevant to the future economic and social development of the

region.

Camosun CollegeCamosun College

The University of VictoriaThe University of Victoria

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Essence (cont)


___________ is a prosperous and just province, whose citizens

achieve their potential and have confidence in the future.

A vibrant and prosperous province where ________s enjoy a

superior quality of life and are confident about the future for

themselves and their children.

Province of Alberta Province of Alberta

Government of BC Government of BC

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Essence (cont)

• Exercise – which of the following mission statements belong to:

To help our clients and our people excel

At _____, we turn knowledge into value for the benefit of our clients, our people and the capital markets. We help companies to grow with confidence. We create fulfilling career

opportunities. And we help to build trust between investors and organizations-a

vitally important job in the current business climate.

We aim to be recognized as leaders in terms of the services we provide and the industries

we serve. This means driving ourselves to be the best in everything we do.

Deloitte & Touche Deloitte & Touche

KPMG LLP KPMG LLP

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Essence (cont)


To create a great city of communities which cares about its people, its environment and the opportunities to live, work and prosper.

To be the most livable city in Canada.

City of VancouverCity of Vancouver

City of Victoria City of Victoria

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Essence (cont)

• A Vision:– Bonds individuals in the organization– Inspires– Is an anchor in hard times and times of

change– Is a potent competitive tool– Builds community with others

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Essence (cont)

• Technique (The Visionary’s Handbook)– Freeze your reality at this precise moment in

time – Take 60 seconds for each of the following:

– List all the things you are (benchmark)– Declare a major in your future by listing all the things you

will be. This is the reality you hope to invent.– List your postulates about the future: “Things that will

have to be true in order for me to be what I will be.”– List the things that mark you as a radical among your

peers.

Revel in the certainty of change. With each change, you are opening up to the full range of your own possibilities.

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Essence (cont)

• In The Visionary’s Handbook, Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker suggest that a visionary needs four things:– An understanding of who you are– An understanding of where you want to

go– An ability to recognize their own seminal

moments – where the seeds to their future are planted

– An attitude of insurgency

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Essence (cont)

• Technique– When visioning, repackage the concept of time

within your organization– Review your future every 19 weeks, or every 5

months, or some other asynchronous interval and you’ve placed your review at odds with the normal rhythms of your organization and made it disjunctive instead of conjunctive

– That’s part of what it means to have the attitude of an insurgent

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Essence (cont)

• Built upon a foundation of curiosity, history and geography, and with an on overriding passion, a Successful Vision has four attributes:

Passion

Curiosity GeographyHistory

Consistent Unique ServicingClear

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Essence (cont)

• Clear:– Streamline the vision, simplify the story– Plain speaking is critical– Use simple ideas:

• Southern Airlines example – “Third-grade vision” – any 3rd grader can understand

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Essence (cont)

• Consistent– A course based upon a sound idea can

serve well over time– Know what to change and what not to

change – what is part of the foundation and what is dynamic.

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Essence (cont)

• Unique– A successful vision is unique– Most successful organizations do one

thing and do it well– To differentiate, find gaps in a competitor

or market– Juxtaposition yourself against the

competition– Example: Variety vs Specialty

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Essence (cont)

• Unique– Try and own a word in the customer’s

mind (Volvo – ‘safety’, Fedex – ‘overnight’)

– What is your ‘word’.– Great names score points in both the

“clear” and “unique” pillars of a successful vision

– You can differentiate visually, through logo and products

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Essence (cont)

• Serving– “The only valid reason to the existence of any

enterprise, for profit or non, is to provide products or services to people… to somehow make the world a better place.”

– Service is purpose:• We all need a purpose, to be useful• A mission of service is a mission of importance• The server is always in a ‘heads up’ mode, always

scanning for new ways to serve people

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Essence (cont)

• Find a need and fill it– Scanning for opportunities:

• Copy an existing idea into a new geographic territory (i.e. Southwestern and Westjet)

• Copy an existing idea from one industry to another (e.g. superstores)

• Chain it up• Brand an unbranded field• Split things into finer specialization• Make a dramatic breakthrough in a business and

improve the way things are done• Invent a whole new business.

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Essence (cont)

• New Visions for Established Enterprises– Seek opportunities to streamline– Refine and subdivide

• Pick niches• Develop new technologies/techniques• Change the cost structure• Change the service and price structure• Adopt new attitudes• Specialize

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Essence (cont)

• Technique– I will celebrate my one-hundredth birthday on

January 1, 20__.• What are the implications of this goal?• What must I do to achieve this goal?• What must I think about?• What must I avoid?• What can I ignore?• How am I likely to change my future by pursuing it?• And what have I learned from the perspective of that

one-hundredth birthday?– Consider health, finances, family, relationships,

coping with a future world

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Paradoxes for the Visionary

• The Visionary’s Handbook identifies important paradoxes for the visionary:– The closer your vision gets to a provable “truth”,

the more you are simply describing the present in future tense

– The more successful you are at predicting the future, the more you destabilize the present, in every way

– Paradox of Size: The bigger you are, the smaller you need to be. The smaller you are, the bigger you need to appear

– To succeed in the short-term, you need to think long-term

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• The Paradox of Time: You need to live in the present and the future

• Technique– Take a sheet of paper. On the left column, list all your

activities in any sphere over the last seven days that were directly and solely related to living in the present tense. In the right column, list all the activities that were directly and solely related to life in the future tense.

– Go through the lists and assign a value to each activity (1 – low importance, 10 being high importance) based on its importance to your life.

– Total the values on the two columns.– How many of you are living more in the present? How

many of you are living more in the future? How many are living in the ‘pressure tense’ balanced between the present and the future?

Know your own story and follow it to the Future.

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• The Paradox of Competition: Your biggest competitor is your own view of the future. – “We have met the enemy,” “And he is us”. – You have to compete in the future dimension

without destabilizing competition in the present and without subverting the core values that have sustained your business in the past.

Focus on your immediate competition, and you’ll end up imitating its possibilities. Focus on the consumer at the other end of the channel

and you’ll immerse yourself in your own possibilities.

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• The Paradox of Action – You’ve got to go for what you can’t expect to get.– Nothing will turn out exactly as it is

supposed to. No path can take you safely with assurance to where you want to be. Where you want to go to today is almost certainly not where you will get to when you arrive. Regardless, you have to go for what you can’t expect to get.

Focus on your immediate competition, and you’ll end up imitating its possibilities. Focus on the consumer at the other end of the channel

and you’ll immerse yourself in your own possibilities.

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• The Paradox of Leadership – To lead from the front, you have to stay inside the story.– Leaders need to understand that while they

always will be judged by the numbers in the short term, the story they have to tell and their capacity to make listeners live inside the story of their company or organization or country will determine in the long run how the numbers go.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it – Winston Churchill

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Story Line for your Future

• What goes into the story:– It must be in the future tense– It must embody mythic figures from the past who have

shaped the present and will shape the future– Needs to embody the truth of your organization,

contained if possible in a single word, and that truth—that single word, cannot be jury-rigged or otherwise constructed.

– The story must be anecdotal, told in plain language.– The story needs a hero and a villain. It should have

some melodrama; some action; climax and resolution; a plot that turns toward the good at the end on the strength of a key virtue; a beginning; a middle; and an end—all the things that go into a good story.

– The story must have the ring of its own truth. It has to come from the heart, not the division of public affairs.

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Future Day Planner

• Technique– List the seven seminal moments that have gotten you

where you are. – Now list the seven seminal moments that need to happen

for your future to come true. – Next, create a time line between now and whatever date

you have set for your future ambition, and place each of the seven seminal moments on the continuum between Point A and Point B. Finally, write three notes in the margin:

• “All dates plus or minus two years.” • What unexpected moments have occurred since I last

consulted this time line that are sufficiently important to change the trajectory of where I want to go?

• Has anything of such historical significance happened since I last consulted this time line that the future that was my ambition is no longer valid.

– Now, your future has a Day Planner.

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Visionary Organizations

• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies– In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras

suggests that we can build a visionary visionary organization.

– Visionary companies are premier institutions—the crown jewels—in their industries, widely admired by their peers and having a long track record of making a significant impact on the world around them. A visionary company is an organization—an institution.

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• In their matched pair study, Collins and Porras shatter 12 myths of success:1. It takes a great idea to start a great company.2. Visionary companies require great and charismatic

visionary leaders.3. The most successful companies exist first and foremost

to maximize profits.4. Visionary companies share a common subset of “correct”

core values.5. The only constant is change. (Core values in a visionary

company form a rock-solid foundation and do not drift with the trends and fashions of the day. And the basic purpose of a visionary company—its reasons for being—can serve as a guiding beacon for centuries, like an enduring star on the horizon.

6. Blue-chip companies play it safe.

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• In their matched pair study, Collins and Porras shatter 12 myths of success:7. Visionary companies are great places to work, for everyone.8. Highly successful companies make their best moves by brilliant

and complex strategic planning. (Make some of their best moves by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and quite literally, by accident.)

9. Companies should hire outside CEOs to stimulate fundamental change. (Home grown executives rule!)

10.The most successful companies focus primarily on beating the competition. (They focus primarily on beating themselves).

11.You can’t have your cake and eat it to. (Embrace the “Genius of the AND”—the paradoxical view that allows them to pursue both A and B at the same time.)

12.Companies become visionary primarily through “vision statements.” (Not sufficient in itself)

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• Clock Building, Not Time Telling – Having a great idea or being a charismatic

visionary leader is “time telling”; building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building.”

– If you’re involved in building and managing a company, think in terms of being an organizational visionary and building the characteristics of a visionary company.

The single most important point … is the critical importance of creating tangible mechanisms aligned to preserve the core and stimulate

progress. This is the essence of clock building.

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• Preserve the Core / Stimulate Progress – “If an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing

world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except its basic beliefs as it moves through corporate life…The only sacred cow in an organization should be its basic philosophy of doing business.” Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

– Core ideology works hand in hand with a relentless drive for progress that impels change and forward movement in all that is not part of the core ideology.

– The drive for progress arises from a deep human urge—to explore, to create, to discover, to achieve, to change, to improve.

– In a visionary company, the drive to go further, to do better, to create new possibilities needs no external justification.

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• Core ideology– Visionary companies don’t merely declare an ideology, they

also take steps to make the ideology pervasive throughout the organization and transcend the individual leader.

– Visionary companies more thoroughly indoctrinate employees into a core ideology, creating cultures so strong that they are almost cult-like around the ideology.

– Core Ideology = Core Values + PurposeCore Ideology = Core Values + Purpose• Core ValuesCore Values = The organization’s essential and enduring

tenets—a small set of general guiding principles; not to be confused with specific cultural or operating practices; not to be compromised for financial or short-term expediency.

• PurposePurpose = The organization’s fundamental reasons for existence beyond just making money—a perpetual guiding star on the horizon; not to be confused with specific goals or business strategies.

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• Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs)– BHAGS can be a particularly powerful mechanism to

stimulate progress. – A BHAG is clear and compelling and serves as a unifying

focal point of effort. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines.

– A BHAG engages people—it reaches out and grabs them in the gut. It is tangible, energizing, highly focused. People “get it” right away; it takes little or no explanation.

– A goal cannot be classified as a BHAG without a high level of commitment to the goal.

– To set BHAGs requires a certain level of unreasonable confidence.

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• Cult-Like Cultures– Because the visionary companies have such clarity

about who they are, what they’re all about, and what they’re trying to achieve, they tend to not have much room for people unwilling or unsuited to their demanding standards.

– Found four common characteristics of cults that the visionary companies display

• Fervently held ideology• Indoctrination• Tightness of fit• Elitism

– Visionary companies tend to be cult-like around their ideologies.

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• Try a Lot of Stuff and Keep What Works– Visionary companies more aggressively harness the

power of evolution. Evolutionary processes can be a powerful way to stimulate progress.

– Example – Johnson and Johnson’s entry into consumer products began by accident.

– Example – 3 M – evolved from a failed mining company into a manufacturer of sandpaper and grinding wheels.

– Five basic lessons for stimulating evolutionary progress in a visionary company.

• Give it a try – and quick. Do, Adjust, Move, Act.• Accept that mistakes will be made.• Take small steps• Give people the room they need• Mechanisms – build that ticking clock

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• Visionary companies install powerful mechanisms to create discomfort – to obliterate complacency – and thereby stimulate change and improvement before the external world demands it.

• Managers are visionary companies simply do not accept the proposition that they must choose between short-term performance or long-term success. They build first and foremost for the long-term while simultaneously holding themselves to highly demanding short-term standards.

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• Building the Vision – A well-conceived vision consists of two major

components – core ideology and an envisioned future. • Core Ideology consists of two elements: core values and

core purpose.– Core values are the organization’s essential and enduring

tenets – a small set of timeless guiding principles that require no external justification; they have intrinsic value and importance to those inside the organization.

– Core purpose is the organization’s fundamental reason for being. More difficult to identify that core values.

– Envisioned Future - consists of two parts: • A ten to thirty year BHAG and• Vivid descriptions of what it will be like when the

organization achieves the BHAG.

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• The essential questions about the envisioned future involve such questions as:– Does it get juices flowing?– Do we find it stimulating?– Does it stimulate forward momentum?– Does it get people going?

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Powerful Visions Endure

2:58

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” May 1961

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Reference Sources

• Hoover’s Vision – Original Thinking for Business Success – Gary Hoover

• Visionary’s Handbook, Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker

• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras

• Creativity, Inc. Building an Inventive Organization, Jeff Mauzy and Richard Harriman, Harvard Business School Publishing, 2003

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Questions

Documents

1 Visioning and Corporate Governance Presentation to FMI/CGA/CMA PD Event February 3, 2004 Gordon S. Gunn, CA, CISA, CMC Victoria, BC The real voyage