Multi-level visioning

The single most important foundation stone of business success today is lea dership-especially visionary leadership. General Electric, Coca-Cola, Micro soft, Dell Computer, and Wal-Mart-all visionary companies. What do those co mpanies have in common? Each is obsessive about what it does, and never sto ps emphasizing that. In Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, James Collins a nd Jerry Porras note qualities that truly visionary companies have in commo n: They possess a bedrock faith and uncommon passion for what they're in busin ess to do. They navigate the business world with extraordinary deftness-adapting their strategies, operating goals, and culture as necessary while remaining true to an enduring set of values. They have a, core ideology (from which their values spring) that is unchang ing and that transcends immediate customer demands and market conditions. They allow the unifying ideology to guide and inspire people, creating enor mous solidarity and esprit de corps. a They subscribe to BHAGS-"big, hairy, audacious goals." Because a company doesn't so much create its core ideology as arrive at it through an organic process of selfreflection and action planning, it's crit ical that every company develop strategic visioning and process tools to he lp it reassess and, if necessary, reframe its organizational vision periodi cally. You can use strategic visioning tools to help you and your organization eng age in breakthrough thinking, scenario planning, product imagineering, and leadership competency building. Information developed from such tools coale sces leadership thinking around business priorities and creates a new found ation of empirical data and shared opinions.