Letter: A Great Vision Is Not a Plan or a Strategy

Published on: 12 Sep, 2014
Updated on: 12 Sep, 2014

From Adrian Atkinson

A great vision is not a plan or strategy.

A vision should be a motivating picture of what everybody should be working to.

It shouldn’t contain all the answers but it should represent an image or dream which all should know when it has been reached. In a way it has to be full of pies in the sky and should not contain the answers. If it contains answers or solutions it is a plan.

The vision needs to be stretching and almost impossible but to quote Adidas, “Impossible is nothing”. If you reach for the stars you may land on the moon. Which brings me to a perfect example of how a vision should be integrated into to us all.

The story goes that JFK was visiting NASA looking at the Apollo project and asked a cleaner what he did and the response was: “I’m helping to put a man on the Moon”. This story may or may not be true, but it doesn’t really matter. It exemplified the general sentiment shared by everyone involved in that project – the sentiment that regardless of how large or visible their contribution was, those involved all felt a genuine and direct connection between the work they did and that moment when Neil Armstrong took that first step on the Moon.

I haven’t seen the vision [presented by the Guildford Vision Group and Allies & Morrison] but this should be the test of whether it is a true vision or whether it’s a plan.