Page 30 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

20 HBR Leader’s Handbook

“world free of poverty” vision was so powerful, these individuals with their
unique contributions could feel as if they were joining forces to achieve
that larger inspirational goal together. They weren’t just writing reports,
doing studies, or making loans, but were part of an institution and a team
that were striving to make life better for millions of people.
This vision also cascaded through the organization. Leaders of regional
divisions and functional areas throughout the World Bank developed vi-
sions that catalyzed their people around particular challenges relating to
poverty elimination. For example, Mieko Nishimizu, the vice president of
the South Asia region, focused on a vision for reducing poverty at the
village level in her countries, particularly since many of the previous eco-
nomic development projects had not reached the villages. Dennis Whittle,
another senior leader who headed up a strategy team, developed a vision of
leveraging ideas worldwide to fight poverty rather than just relying on the
Bank’s expertise. This led his team to create a global “development mar-
ketplace” for poverty-reduction solutions that eventually became a regular
part of the Bank’s strategic approach.

What is a vision?

Before we describe how you as a leader create a vision for your department,
team, or unit, we need to explain what a vision really is—and what features
make it work in all the ways that the poverty-elimination vision Wolfen-
sohn helped engender worked for the World Bank.
“Vision” often means different things to different people; in organiza-
tions, it’s often confused with “mission,” “values,” and more. These concepts
overlap somewhat, but we believe that vision gives you a unique opportu-
nity to exert your leadership. It is the one pillar that you, as a leader, can
periodically reassess and reshape, as Wolfensohn did at the World Bank.
Nobody else can do this for you; it’s your role to catalyze and steer both the
process of determining a vision and also the particular boldness of your
approach.
So how is a vision different from a mission or a company’s values? An
organization’s mission is its long-term, mostly unchanging charter—its