It’s very hard to serve both a current and future environment with the same resources. You almost have to create a completely parallel skunkworks organization (other than infrastruture). Are you going to have some of your most innovative people stop creating new stuff for your “current” market, so they can work on the future? How are your customers going to feel about that?

I should explicitly position Tangible Futures in terms of innovation. In this kind of change we don’t know what to do, by definition, because we haven’t invented it yet. We know smoking is bad for us and what it looks like to stop. But, to take a hypothetical example, what does it look like for General Motors to stop selling cars and be a sub-contractor to Toyota? It’s barely imaginable to GM now, but as an alternate future it might be a desirable strategic goal.

I think a tangible future like this could help build the resolve you discuss in your article. Once the client has the will, the kind of coaching and leadership you discuss comes into play, and I agree is vital to achieving real improvement.

In my article “Strategy and the Fat SMoker” ( http://davidmaister.com/articles/4/42/ ) I point out that the barrier to improvement for all of us is not that we don’t know what to do, or why, or how.

We are even, on occasions, inspired by the vison (I can be an exercising, fit non-smoker?)

However, like most businesses we are not working the program because it’s “pain today, gain tomorrow.” If we are to improve, we need great coaches who will help us stick to the program.

Some industry literature backs up this value of vision. See “Instill an inspiring purpose.” in
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=5289&t=organizations

I believe vision is central to any organization. I have been in organizations with strong focus on vision (lucky enough I started my career here) and ones in which there was a stated Vision, but it was not believed in or communicated.

Vision ties employees emotionally to an organization - we are all humans finally, just running after dollars is not as exciting as building the best product.

Which get to your point about communicating it well, as it should excite people. One of the earliest implementations of Design Thinking that I have seen corporate circle was about a decade ago.. On the company’s annual day, the leadership team decided to shrink the size of the Podium, so that all employees (about 2000 in a single auditorium) could see them. It had an impact, as employees could see the body language of these guys and not just hear their words. They could communicate their passion towards next years plan much better.

Cheers
Alok