The problem is, "normal" is gone, never to return. Rather than causing despair, difficult times can be an opportunity to step back and do the critical thinking that will sow the seeds for future growth. I'm not talking about traditional strategic planning, but planning way up at the 30,000-foot level. Now is the time to consider a far-reaching vision for your IT function. If that vision supports your company's broader vision, you'll benefit mightily. If your company has no vision, seize the chance to show others what a vision can do. I didn't always think vision carried much weight—even as a management professor and consultant to executives wrestling with the dynamics of organizational growth and change for two decades. When clients asked for help developing a vision, I was skeptical of any management trick-du-jour. I thought "the vision thing" was just another useless exercise.

I began a series of research projects that I thought would prove, once and for all, that vision had no impact on organizational performance. A year into the first project, I began to see some very surprising data—and I had to admit my working hypothesis was dead wrong. Research showed that a well-articulated vision implemented companywide had a profoundly positive impact on sustained growth. Contrary to my original belief, companies that first develop a vision embracing key themes of purpose, strategy, and values and then weave this vision into their corporate fabric perform better. Much better.

EasyGroup, the London corporation that operates EasyJet airlines, EasyCar auto rental, EasyInternetCafe (now also in the United States), and EasyCinema, is obsessed with using technology to reduce costs. The CEO's vision strategy demands that each new business focus on services with low fixed costs and price elasticity, and available for purchase on the Internet.

Each new business creates a signature offering that's no-frills and gives customers few choices. The core of this 30,000-foot strategy is to manage yield and adjust prices by the minute, to match demand. A seat on a plane, in an Internet cafe, in a rental car, or at a movie can be sold only once in any given moment. Information technology that processes yield rates is, therefore, the critical core competency. Chris Branagan and Phil Jones, CTOs of EasyCar and EasyInternetCafe, respectively, are strategic players because they lead a vision-critical function. EasyJet's sales grew 63% in 2002 and income rose 37%.

EasyGroup isn't alone in delivering on its vision. Publicly owned companies that use a vision to guide their growth have significantly higher market-cap growth and top-and bottom-line growth than competitors. While some executives may publicly opine that vision is a rather squishy concept, the research yields plenty of hard facts showing that companies with successfully executed vision processes grow better and over a more sustained period.

I found, for example, that as a group companies with a vision were twice as profitable as the S&P 500, and their stock price grew nearly three times the rate of the S&P 500. An analysis of average compounded total return found the visionary companies earning their investors 17.7% more than the S&P 500 overall.

Seeing with new vision
A well-conceived and-implemented vision doesn't magically yield this kind of performance. It comes from people who are challenged by the vision and remain focused on a clear, yet distant target. These companies had higher productivity per employee, greater levels of employee commitment, increased loyalty, more esprit de corps, enhanced clarity of departmental and/or organizational values, and a greater sense of pride in their company. This is the fuel for growth.

The logical question is why more businesses don't leverage the power of the vision process. A big reason is that most CEOs report a great deal of discomfort working with the vision process. This doesn't imply they disbelieve in the value of vision—but they feel ill-prepared for the process.

This last measure is perhaps one of the most compelling findings if one considers all the growth that's not being achieved. While Larry Bossidy in his book Execution takes on senior managers for their failure to execute well against strategy, perhaps the bigger problem is the lack of clear vision to create a meaningful strategy. Without vision, strategic planning is worthless. Nonetheless, senior executives do believe vision is important. A 2002 Conference Board study of 700 global CEOs found that the most important "marketplace and management issue" in both 2002 and 2001 was "engaging employees in the vision." This ranked higher than access to and cost of capital.

The operative word here is "engaging." Success, when it comes to vision, isn't crafting a few paragraphs that sound like they were excerpted from a Dilbert comic strip. Success is a vision that tells an engaging story people want to be a part of, challenges people, and creates a sense of urgency. Success is when the vision becomes embedded into the daily decisions and actions of those you want to lead.

CEOs often talk the talk; committees crank out visions and post them on their Web sites and on the walls of corporate conference rooms. But usually, the process doesn't go far beyond that. Rarely does executive management take advantage of vision to transform every far-flung limb of the company. The work I do with CEOs and executive groups makes me realize it's difficult for them to stretch their thinking toward the future. They're very grounded, realistic people. They're drawn to missions that let them describe what an organization does now, rather than to vision, which forces them to describe why a company engages in these activities.

The vision-development process is a balancing act. It requires imagination, a mental capacity for synthesis, and a trust in intuition. CIOs, in particular, coming from a background that emphasizes analysis, facts, and function, may be the last C-suite executives to appreciate the impact of an overarching vision. And I've seen this to be not only a leadership deficiency in some CIOs, but a significant career killer. When so much in the CIO's training is about dealing with verifiable facts, it's hard to let oneself pull anchor and engage in a process that feels like floating in a sea of possibilities. But the CIO must play a crucial role in articulating the company's vision, embracing it, and adopting an IT strategy and infrastructure to support it.

CIOs can lead the way
While I may be over-reaching, I don't believe the CIO's job has all that much to do with technology. It's a leadership role that should be focused on management and organization—understanding how to put a business together and how to get people to work together much better. It's clearly a complex role, but the real obstacles facing CIOs often have little, if anything, to do with nuts-and-bolts technology. The more visionary CIOs stay focused on how to continually enrich customer interactions and improve internal efficiencies. They take a companywide view rather than focusing on their own department, and they invite business heads into their planning process rather than assuming they'll appear magically when the time comes to make critical IT decisions. Visionary CIOs frame their budgets based on what can benefit the company broadly rather than responding in a one-off fashion to requests from the operating businesses.

Some of the best CIO visions I've worked with reflect how IT will help achieve companywide, long-term aspirations. At The Mitre Corp., IT folks have a saying, "Mitre knows what Mitre knows" to describe the accessibility of information across the corporation—something they believe distinguishes Mitre from other companies. Ensuring that the body of Mitre knowledge and technology is available to employees, when and where they need it, is critical to its CIO/CTO leadership. As a result, the company formed the Center for Information and Technology (CI&T), which provides the tools and information that let the company do mission-critical work. Generally, when there's a broader organizational vision like Mitre's that guides the CIO's vision, half the battle is won. But in too many cases, the CEO may be incapable or unwilling to set a visionary course. Then, the CIO can go it alone and engage in his or her own vision process. Visionary CIOs look at each new IT system and ask: How does this dovetail with challenges coming from the broader vision? How will it put us in a more advantageous position?

Vision is about taking a long view—it's not just about planning. While most companies aren't good at vision, they're usually good at planning. Vision is about possibilities. In that sense, a vision doesn't fluctuate as a strategy might to navigate immediate circumstances.

My research on successful vision-driven companies uncovered three themes that all organizational visions must address. The first requires committing to a far-reaching purpose—what I call the raison d'tre.

A successful vision tells a lucid story about what the company wants to be. It goes further than proclaiming (the often arrogant) desires of "Being No. 1," "The Most Sought After," "The Full-Service Solution Provider," or other pithy statements. These aren't visionary, because they're not within the company's control. Maximizing shareholder wealth isn't the primary objective for companies that have sustained growth over decades. While this may seem an anomaly, the reason for the absence of financial targets as the principal goal is that they provide no clue about the internal functions required to achieve them. Shareholder wealth, profit, or Being No. 1 are the metaphorical equivalent of the oxygen, food, and water that the body requires. They aren't the point of life, but, without them, there is no life.

Strategy of disctinction
The second element is strategy, but not in the traditional sense of two, three, or five years out. Here, strategy defines the distinctive competitive advantages that will bring the company closer to its raison d'tre.

Management at United Parcel Service would be troubled if people experienced it only as "the package-delivery company." Owing to its sophisticated and visionary concept of IT, UPS has executed a strategy that goes far beyond handling packages. Over the years, with IT at the core, the company has emerged at the center of every crucial logistics step in its clients' operations. From shipping the raw materials for a product to processing payment for its final sale, the vision strategy is to leverage IT so powerfully that UPS will eventually morph into a company that helps businesses manage their supply chains, store their inventory, repair their products, answer their phones—and deliver their packages. By the end of 2002, this strategy—germinating from IT, a noncore business—had already accounted for 25% of revenue and remains one of UPS' distinctive competencies. Finally, purpose and strategy remain only intellectual concepts unless employees have principles and values that guide their action. What should be the hallmarks of great management in your company? How do you view innovation, risk, and mistakes? How do you treat customers and one another? These and myriad other factors are determined by a culture, yet the foundation of any corporate culture is built on a set of values. When these values aren't predetermined and continually reinforced, other values—and typically ones counterproductive to performance—will emerge.

Setting a vision requires a planning or executive group, usually selected by the CEO. Even at this early stage, it should include the CIO, whose input on the viability of vision execution through IT will be invaluable. In fact, nearly 75% of CIOs are members of their company's executive group.

Whether at the corporate or IT level, each person should discuss his or her vision. Going through the process in detail lets the group map strategic issues and perspectives, and should yield diversity and richness. The group should keep in mind questions addressing each of the three core elements of the vision—raison d'tre, strategy, and values. The idea is to move the process from an individual sense of commitment to a shared, group perspective.

Articulating the vision is only part of the job. One of the common disconnects is the belief that once a vision is defined, it will somehow get implemented on its own. If a growth vision is to deliver on its potential, management has to consider how it's implemented—how it filters through technology, finance, and corporate culture—from the outset. If it doesn't come "alive" within the company, then people will justifiably become cynical about it.

Dow Chemical's organizational vision, for example, elaborates on its principle of sustainable development and continuously seeks to balance economic, environmental, and social responsibilities. The IT function takes its cues from the broader vision and focuses on applying technology to enrich customer interactions and improve internal efficiencies. At Dow, there's enormous collaboration between the business and IT teams; together, they have consistently developed innovative solutions that help Dow grow successfully.

Too often, CIOs fall into the "mission trap," focusing on keeping the technology structure running, meeting the needs of people in other functions, and planning for the short term. Of course, these aren't to be de-emphasized. But visionary CIOs keep asking themselves and their staffs how their function can help the company reach its far longer-term vision. In effect, these leaders ask the organizational equivalent of the existential question most people face at some point in life: Why do we exist? Rather than focusing solely on "what we do"—which keeps you bounded by a set of activities and deliverables—asking, "Why do we do what we do?" opens up new possibilities.

If there's no companywide vision, take a leadership role and influence the CEO to think about a vision process. Even if business is flat or down, jump in: Senior management is often more open than ever to rethinking the larger questions that can lead to success—or even survival. This is where friendly guerrilla tactics are required. Bring your band of IT brothers and sisters together in small groups and listen to their ideas about how IT should be supporting the company. Encourage them to think big, not on a technical level.

Ultimately, a great vision needs great champions devoted to its cause, and the CIO must be comfortable and effective in this role. A vision helps businesspeople make decisions about what they need to achieve their goals. This, in turn, helps technology people build the tools required. And, you'll get enormous buy-in from IT people. Their own capacity will be enhanced because they'll now understand why they're doing what they're doing. There's no better time than now to engage in this process.

Mark Lipton is author of Guiding Growth: How Vision Keeps Companies on Course (Harvard Business School Press, 2003).

See related articles: