Without vision, proceed at your own peril

Photo by David Beale on Unsplash

By Deron Snyder

-- "Where there is no vision, the people perish" Proverbs 29:18.

Just like people, organizations are at risk of perishing when guidance and direction are insufficient. Picking out prime examples is easy, considering how hindsight is 20-20.

But perhaps no company proves the point more convincingly than Blockbuster.

By 1993, the video rental chain had more than 3,400 stores and was encouraging consumers to “make it a Blockbuster night.” But the leaders' FutureVision googles were faulty and led to failure in navigating an oncoming tidal wave that turned the company’s fortunes upside down.

A June 1999 article in the Chicago Sun-Times asked readers to “imagine a Blockbuster night without Blockbuster, a time when no video store will ever slap you with a late fee or fine you for failing to rewind. Because in this world, there are no videos, only home computers.”  

In that world, Amazon had recently entered the DVD market and a little company named Netflix was just getting started. Blockbuster saw the Internet’s potential impact but moved with the urgency of inert objects over the next several years, waiting too long to embrace DVD technology, too long to create a rival subscription service, and too long to install Redbox-like kiosks in the market.

So, it’s clear that strategic vision is vital.

But strategic communication in transmitting that vision is just as important.

It turns out that the Blockbuster CEO eventually implemented a strategy to compete with Netflix and won the board’s approval. But one of his lieutenants raised alarm about decreased profits, was named the new CEO and immediately reversed the changes that might’ve staved off bankruptcy, which occurred five years later.

The point isn’t to pick on Blockbuster, because there are plenty of other organizations that failed to see and/or effectively respond to future events. Asking leaders to own crystal balls and be certified fortune-tellers might seem unfair,. But it’s an unavoidable part of their duty if they’re to carry out the job properly and effectively.

Strategic management is necessary to ensure smooth processes for planning, budgeting, staffing, etc. It is necessary for day-to-day excellence in performance that’s consistent, on time, and cost-efficient. No one should ever underestimate the complexity or value of superior management. 

But at the same time, that’s not strategic leadership.

Leadership is critical to forming and implementing strategy; good strategy doesn’t happen without strategic leadership. That’s how an individual takes an organization into the future and produces useful change along the way.

The best among these are “Built-to-Last” leaders, as identified by Jerry Porras and Jim Collins. Not only do these leaders have vision that’s communicated clearly, but they also have a passion for change that includes learning, experimenting, stretching and taking risks.

No, leaders like Steve Jobs aren’t born every day. He’s pictured in the dictionary next to “exceptional.” But Jobs exemplifies the prescience that can separate good from great, and ordinary from extraordinary.

In 1983, he gave a speech that painted a remarkably accurate picture of technology that was still two decades from becoming reality. He foreshadowed wireless networking, the iPad, the App Store, and more, saying that Apple’s strategy is “to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes.”  

(Lest anyone think technological predictions are easy, I’m still waiting for flying cars that fold into briefcases, as featured on “The Jetsons.” And, of course, nothing would compare to the ultimate form of quick trips, “beaming” ourselves from one location to the next like Captain James T. Kirk and crew of the USS Enterprise on “Star Trek.”)

If such foresight existed in the media industry, maybe newsroom employment wouldn’t have dropped nearly a quarter in less than 10 years. From 2008 to 2017, about 27,000 jobs were lost,  with the decline driven primarily by newspapers.

Granted, newsprint vs. the Internet is kind of like a horse-and-buggy vs. a Corvette, and even inspired media leadership faces many inherent disadvantages. But no one can argue that media – particularly legacy companies with long-established newspapers – were led by a bunch of visionaries as the digital threat emerged.

On the contrary, newspapers for the most part failed to learn, experiment or take risks, instead falling back on the tried-and-true practices used in building their monopolies.

We see how that worked out. Not so good.

Nowadays, media leaders are testing a variety of strategies to aid newspapers. The Wall Street made the leap to a “hard” paywall in 1996 and remains alone on that island.  Other papers have widely divergent approaches to paywalls – if instituted at all – in terms of type, price, side doors and exceptions. It’s too early to tell which papers are on the right track and which are on the road to oblivion, but at least leaders are demonstrating and communicating their vision.

Here’s hoping it’s sharper than the vision that led Sears & Roebuck to ruin.

The 125-year-old company was once the nation’s biggest retailer, but it yielded the title to Walmart in the early 1990s and filed for bankruptcy last month. It began as a watch company, a far cry from the mail-order behemoth with 400-plus stores that it morphed into. Judging by accounts from several former employees, the company’s leadership made a bad turn in the 1980s and kept going until the company was driven into the ground.

So, it’s not enough for a leader to have strategic vision. The presage must be correct if an organization is to grow and prosper. Accuracy isn’t guaranteed – unless the leader finds a time-traveling DeLorean and returns from yonder like Biff in “Back to the Future Part II” – but certain steps can increase the odds.

In the end, much of the decision-making comes from the gut, which has strategic-vision muscles that individuals can strengthen by, among other things: spending time with customers; understanding the organization; analyzing the competition; and becoming a student of strategy.

Inevitably there will be leaders with visions that lead to undesirable history, leaders whose organizations either err on the side of caution or unwisely throw it to the wind. Failure happens.  

But there’s no excuse for not trying, which is equivalent to leaders not possessing or communicating a strategic vision. 

Their organizations will surely perish in those cases.