5 TIPS FOR CREATING A STICKY STRATEGIC VISION

Articulate your organization’s “core idea.” A core idea is your “secret sauce” — it informs every aspect of your business.

About Jack Berlin

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core idea make chicken Caesar salad core values low fare airline mission serve

Articulate your organization’s “core idea.” A core idea is your “secret sauce” — it informs every aspect of your business.

About Jack Berlin

About Prizm Share

core idea make chicken Caesar salad core values low fare airline mission serve

<p>Â© 2009 * Dan Heath and Chip Heath * madetostick.com * fastcompany.com/madetostick 
 
5 TIPS FOR CREATING A STICKY STRATEGIC VISION
1. Articulate your organizationâ€™s â€œcore idea.â€ A core 
idea is your â€œsecret sauceâ€â€”it informs every aspect of 
your business. If it doesnâ€™t help employees make 
decisions, it ainâ€™t a core idea.  For instance, Southwest 
Airlines says theyâ€™re â€œTHE low-fare airline.â€ Herb 
Kelleher gave an example of a marketing exec who 
approached him with some customer survey data. She 
suggested that Southwest should add a chicken Caesar 
salad to some of their longer flights. Kelleher asked 
her, â€œWill adding a chicken Caesar salad help to make 
us THE low-fare airline in those markets? Because if it 
wonâ€™t, we arenâ€™t serving any damn chicken salad.â€ 
Notice how the core idea helps employees make 
tradeoffs between 2 competing values: customer 
satisfaction and economy. For Southwest, economy 
wins. For Singapore Air, customer satisfaction wins. 
2. Donâ€™t zoom out, choose. Letâ€™s say you run a 
restaurant in Centerville that 
serves outstanding thin-crust 
pizza. Your mission: To serve 
the tastiest pizza in town. But 
then the chef reminds you that 
he makes great ravioliâ€”heâ€™s 
frustrated that your mission 
doesnâ€™t reflect it. So you zoom out: To serve the best 
Italian cuisine in town. But what about your great 
service? Your birthday parties? Your family-friendly 
decor? You keep expanding the mission to include all 
these pieces, until you end up with an unholy 
statement like this: To create cuisine-related solutions 
for regionally proximate families. Fight this urge! Donâ€™t 
zoom out! A great vision is specific, and that means 
making a hard choice. Chip and I once worked with a 
mental health chain that had 11 core values. Ouch. 11 
core values equals 0 core values. Executives want to 
compromise, so they add in everyoneâ€™s pet values. Are 
you willing to make the hard choices among priorities? 
3. Make the vision concrete. JFKâ€™s speech is the Holy 
Grail: We will put a man on the moon and return him 
safely within the decade. What a concrete vision! Was 
there anyone in American who misunderstood? The 
nonprofit City Year says: One day, the most common 
question asked of a 17 year-old in this country will be: 
â€œWhere are you going to do your year of national 
service?â€ Boeing was incredibly concrete (and specific) 
with its goal for the 727 passenger plane: â€œThe 727 
must seat 131 passengers, fly nonstop from Miami to 
New York City, and land on runway 4-22 at LaGuardia 
[one of the shortest runways at the time].â€ Concrete 
goals like these help to ensure alignment. They ensure 
everyone shares a common picture of the destination. 
4. Show why employees should care about it. 
â€œExxonMobil Corporation is committed to being the 
worldâ€™s premier petroleum and petrochemical 
company.â€ Bleh. No one wakes up in the morning 
excited about that mission. But contrast that with 
J&Jâ€™s Credo: â€œWe believe our first responsibility is to 
the doctors, nurses, and patients, to mothers and 
fathers and all others who use our products and 
services.â€ Itâ€™s easy to see how 
someone would feel proud to 
support that mission! And 
Sony, in the early 1950s, said 
they wanted to become the 
company most known for 
changing the worldwide image 
of Japanese products as being of poor quality. J&J and 
Sonyâ€™s missions add clarity and motivation. 
5. Consider the virtues of single focus. Change can 
happen quickly when leaders orient the company 
toward a single, bright-line goal. Gordon Bethune, 
taking over a troubled Continental Airlines, made his 
team focus on on-time arrivals. Paul Oâ€™Neill, taking 
charge of Alcoaâ€™s aluminum empire, made his top 
priority: No worker accidents. (His team thought he 
was nuts, but he knew that to prevent accidents, 
theyâ€™d have to understand their operations so well 
that operational efficiencies would unfold naturally.) 
In the 1980s, a new director of New York Cityâ€™s 
troubled subway system declared: No graffiti. He knew 
that eliminating graffiti would provide a quick and 
important victory and would, in turn, lead to other 
achievements. Can you be strategically single-minded? 
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