Vision

                                                                                                March 26, 1992

   A long cherished ideal found true in experience matures into a capacity, reaches the mind as an idea and finally becomes a vision. Without discussing a world vision or an idealistic vision, we can confine ourselves to a practical vision of 1) saving a company from ruin, 2) raising a company to reputation, 3) making a company a cohesive force internally or a lucrative centre externally.

   Several such practical visions can be listed. Let us consider raising a company to good reputation.

   For many, good reputation is not felt to be one of their needs. But there are people who long for it. They say, "We work hard, do so much. It is not known enough outside. We are taken to be one of the many. I would love to hear that we are reputable."  This is an early yearning. Should his own personality find this aspiration suitable then it becomes real, not a phrase espoused for its decency. An urge rising from right roots gathers momentum and starting as skill at several points, he acquires the skills in the work which an executive of a company of reputation will have. Skills mature into general capacity and later into particular talents. He develops out of his urge capacity of a reputable manager or talents of a star.  Skills, capacities, talents etc. start as physical, rise to become vital and finally begin to inform the individual the ideas out of which such capacities etc. issue. From the bottom it is from physical to mental. It is a long training. He suddenly hits upon an idea out of which these issue. Punctuality was developed like that.  Several people hit upon one such idea. Quality, customer service, workmanship, elimination of waste, cooperation, bargaining, cost cutting, thrift etc. are visions developed by early entrepreneurs. They are partial. Chrysler made good engines of durable quality and that led him to found a company. Visions are of all orders and all dimensions. Reading the biography of Chrysler, it is very clear how he became a leader and acquired the vision of Durable Quality.

   Acquiring a vision takes a long time as it is from physical to mental. Transmitting the vision can be done in a very short time as it is from mental to physical. The first is arduous as it is a process of knowledge acquired through work, i.e. very hard work yielding a drop of knowledge. The second is not arduous but in comparison with the first, is highly mentalised. He should have become by now CONSCIOUS of the process by which he rose and must have a system of training by which he can transmit it. Colleges do it now, i.e. they transmit to students all the visions of all the early pioneers in terms of ideas and training.

   Tom Peters had a vision but he possessed it semiconsciously. When the readers responded, he started communicating the inspiration without a form or content. Drucker is still at the level of mature capacity of the part, never reached a 'whole' of anything. His is capacity and talent refusing to mature into a vision. Tom's is a vision but hazy and semiconscious without either form or content.

   Iaccoca had a vision of work which he acquired at Form. He had the Form, Content, System, Authority, Power, Experience etc. so that he could demand of the company that they implement it.

   In corporations, talented people through long service acquire work experience which condenses into skills, capacities and talent to flower as an idea and further mature into a vision. If this is what an executive rising to CEO experiences, the same can be felt by a youth, born in a family of generations of entrepreneurs, after a few years of initial work. The vision arises and, as he will have the authority to enforce it, he enforces it as soon as he can translate the vision into several further stages, viz.

            Vision

            Idea

            Policy

            Programme

            System through which that programme can be implemented

            Values

This he has to be for each level of the Management.