About Creating Visions & Organizational Goals

Visions and goals inspire employees to work harder.

Operating a company is more than just about making a profit. Even for the owner of the company, to keep him motivated to come into the office every day, he needs something to hold on to that is bigger than the bottom line. To achieve a higher purpose than profits, organization leaders create a vision and set up goals to meet that vision.

Benefits of Visions

Trying to earn more money than your competitor may excite your employees temporarily, but does not encourage long-term employee loyalty or inspire them to put forth their best effort. In the book "The Sustainable Enterprise," Christopher Stephen Brown suggests that employees can unite under worthwhile vision, thus strengthening the company. He writes, "An integrated vision will connect people to purpose and place, painting a picture of a future that is worth making an effort for." Investors and employees can see the future of a company with a thoughtful vision, which inspires them to get involved.

Creating Visions

To create a worthwhile vision, the chief executives should start by getting all the employees of the company involved in giving their opinions about the direction of the company. Gayle Avery writes in the book "Understanding Leadership" that your vision statement should be clear and concise while looking towards the future. It should inspire your stockholders and employees, while offering them a challenge. Keep it brief and more abstract than concrete. For example, the vision statement "Help encourage economic development within the communities where we do business" is brief, looks toward the future and can inspire the employees to work hard for the communities in which they live.

Purpose of Goals

Goals are specific steps and milestones that are set in place to get the organization closer to its vision. They act as a map of strategically aligned points that lead to the vision. Goals are created to make the best use of the human resources, the tangible resources and the technological resources. In "Designing an Efficient Management System," Tanachart Raoprasert writes that leaders must "present steps of that vision clearly so subordinates can see exactly how to achieve it."

Setting Goals

Different from the corporate vision, the organization's goals are concrete and specific. In "The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Organizational Development," Stephen Balzac writes that "the key to successful goals is making them as specific as possible." For example, selling 2000 widgets in June is more specific than a goal of increasing sales for the month. He suggests setting deadlines for each goal. Track the progress you're making towards your vision and modify your goals periodically.

References

• "The Sustainable Enterprise: Profiting from Best Practice"; Christopher Stephen Brown; 2005
• "Understanding Leadership: Paradigms and Cases"; Gayle Avery, Andrew Bell; 2004
• "Designing an Efficient Management System: Modeling of Convergence Factors"; Tanachart Raoprasert, Sardar M. N. Islam; 2010
• "The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Organizational Development"; Stephen R. Balzac; 2010

Resources

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Creating Goals and a Vision
• Emory University; Creating Vision, Goal, and Strategic Initiative Statements