5 Hidden Costs of Unclear Strategic Vision + 2 Steps To Gain Clarity

“Fuzzy” strategic vision increases the odds for disappointing revenue and earnings growth. Even worse, it allows corrosive costs to creep in that sap productivity and morale before CEOs, leadership teams, and owners even notice.

What does success look like?

Without a definitive answer, its common for leadership teams—and everyone else—to get mired down and incur hidden costs that make it harder to run the business profitably. 

In this post, we’ll dig into five corrosive and hidden costs, and share how to address them in a 2-step process to help leaders set a clear strategic vision with a single destination: success. 

5 Corrosive Costs of Unclear Strategic Vision 

Many firms, especially when they’re growing, have a vision that works well enough but isn’t crystal clear. No matter how clear you think your strategic vision is, put these five hidden costs on your radar. They often manifest under the surface, insidiously but steadily eating away at your growth and profits. 

Here’s what to be on the lookout for: 

1. Indecision. Fuzzy vision opens the door to too many competing choices, which makes it very challenging for teams to prioritize and choose what’s best. As a result, decisions tend to lack coherence, consistency, and commitment. And if they’re tough decisions? They’re more likely to be delayed or even avoided all together. 

2. Distractions. Without a “north star,” leadership is more likely to experience “shiny objects syndrome.” Ideas sound great, grab the team’s attention, but then the next one comes along and then another. Suddenly, leadership finds itself caught in a cycle of distraction which feels really busy but accomplishes little and wastes resources.

3. Rising Frustration. While initiatives do end up on the cutting room floor from time to time, it shouldn’t be a constant occurrence. A team who invests significant effort only to see it tossed aside is inevitably going to feel frustrated. Being bounced from one initiative to the next only compounds that frustration.  

   
   

4. Less Accountability. Whether there’s no plan of action or too many, teams end up in the same place where it’s next to impossible for anyone to be held accountable. After all, without clarity about what's most important, what can they be held accountable for?

5. Eroding Commitment. As accountability weakens, so does commitment. When leaders can’t agree on what’s important (or irrelevant), how can team members be all in? Of course commitment wanes as leaders lack clarity and their own accountability. Once this starts, you can bet the larger team will follow suit.  

   
   

Which of these five hidden costs afflict your team? How might fuzzy strategic vision be contributing? 

2 Steps to Clarity 

A clear, compelling strategic vision goes a long way towards mitigating these hidden costs. This is what the first phase of our GAMEPlan process is all about: set the destination. 

We help clients set their destination by accomplishing two key steps: 

(1) develop a clear understanding of the firm’s current realities, and  

(2) create a single, unified vision of the leadership team’s desired future. 

Step 1: Identify current realities. 

To best explore what’s possible, management needs to have a clear, common, and well-rounded understanding of what is true today about the firm’s current realities. Current realities are the foundation on which the team—all together—builds its best forward-looking vision of success. 

How do we accomplish this exactly?   We start by working with the team to build a common understanding and story of what is true today, focusing particularly on critical factors that drive—and slow—growth today. Through interviews, research, and analysis, we examine: 

• market trends and dynamics that most strongly shape future growth opportunities; 

• customer breakdowns, segregation, and aggregation to identify which customer segments and demand drivers accelerate and decelerate growth; 

• key value propositions and competitive dynamics that fuel and hinder growth; 

• the team’s assessment of the firm’s SHOT (i.e., its Superpowers, what’s Holding it back, Options it should invest in, and Torpedoes to avoid) in order to pinpoint what can be leveraged for accelerated growth; and 

• growth insights the team has already learned that they want to prioritize going forward.

From this process emerges a single current realities story. The team can now understand (1) how and for whom the firm adds value, (2) which markets are propelling the firm's growth today or slowing growth down, (3) where the competitive market environment provides the greatest chance for success, and (4) what the firm must do more—and less—of going forward. 

Step 2. Envision and articulate your desired future. 

Once there is a shared understanding of the firm’s current realities, it’s time to turn to the crucial future-focused strategic question: What does success look like? The key is for the team to develop together and buy into a single shared, compelling vision of future success. Not just any future success—their most desired future. 

With our North STAR* process, we help the team generate a single story of success step by step as they: 

• anchor their thinking around the firm’s Strengths and key market Trends, 

• identify and prioritize their Aspirations (i.e., their most desired future outcomes), and 

• map out specific future Results that demonstrate when those aspirations are achieved. 

Once leadership has a North STAR (their singlar vision of success), it's time to define their very desirable future with clear and measurable goals that everyone can agree on. Then, conclude by articulating the specific quantitative and qualitive benefits that achieving this vision will yield.  

Once teams know (1) where they’re going, (2) why they’re going there, (3) which goals they’re striving for, and (4) what they get from achieving them, we find the leadership team’s mindset begins to shift from “Where are we going?” to “Let’s get there!” 

A strategic vision that continually and powerfully energizes future execution rarely comes together quickly. Rather, it’s revealed through deliberate, sensitive processes that: 

• provide clarity about what’s true today in our current realities and  

• help mold a common outlook for where leadership really wants to go in our desired future—and why! 

  
  

Time to get clear about your firm’s destination?

Don’t let a fuzzy destination stall revenue growth and hurt margins. Get clear about success to streamline leadership decisions, diminish distractions, and energize the team. As team commitment and responsibility grow, you'll see rising team desire and commitment to work together to implement their vision and shared outlook. Then leardership is ready to move on to the next GAMEPlan phase of mobilizing your growth plan: Strategize.  

The right strategy starts with the right vision. We work every day with companies who want to be crystal clear about where they’re going and then build the growth plan to get there. Every company deserves that opportunity—to set and reach its most desired destination. Reach out to us for a quick conversation to start charting a better course. 

* North STAR is a derivation of the potent  SOAR tool developed by Dr. Jackie Stravos at Lawrence Technological University.