Quick answer: Great strategy starts with vision. A clear picture of where the company is headed in three to five years gives the leadership team a filter for every priority, hire, and decision. Without it, teams build faster in the wrong direction. Vision starts with the Founder or CEO, but it only becomes real when the whole team can repeat it, which is why it's where I start with every Founder or CEO I work with.
When I sit down with a CEO for the first time, I rarely start by talking about strategy, people, or even goals.
I start with vision.
(When I say "CEO," I mean whoever sits at the top, whether that's the founder, owner, or CEO.)
It's not because those other pieces aren't important. They're vital. But in my experience, when we skip vision and jump straight to execution, we end up building faster in the wrong direction.
What does "vision" really mean for a company?
A company vision is a clear picture of the future you want to create, not a generic "we want to be the best in our industry" statement on a wall.
A strong vision answers questions like:
What impact do we want to have on our customers, our people, and our industry?
What does success look and feel like three to five years from now?
What are we building toward, and why does it matter?
It's purpose, direction, and inspiration, all in one.
Yet many leaders skip this step because they're busy solving today's fires. They're scaling, hiring, managing cash. They're in motion. But without vision, that motion isn't necessarily progress.
Why should vision come before strategy?
Vision should come before strategy because strategy is the path, and vision is the destination. If you don't know where you're going, you can't tell which choices actually move you closer, so every opportunity looks equally good and every fire looks equally urgent.
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras made this case decades ago in their Harvard Business Review article on building a company's vision: enduring companies pair a stable core of purpose and values with a bold, long-term goal.
Verne Harnish built this right into the Scaling Up method. In Scaling Up, core values, purpose, and a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) sit at the top of the One-Page Strategic Plan, and everything below them *annual priorities and quarterly rocks) ladders up to them. Vision isn't a separate exercise. It's the top line of the plan.
In practice, vision gives you a simple test for every strategic decision: does this move us closer to where we said we're going?
Why does vision start with the leader at the top?
Vision starts, and lives, with the CEO. If the CEO isn't clear, no one else will be. The leadership team starts pulling in different directions, priorities blur, and decisions slow down. Before long, everyone's busy, but not aligned.
When we start with vision, something shifts. The CEO's energy changes. Decisions get easier. The team starts saying, "Oh, that's where we're headed."
Here's what I've seen again and again:
Vision unifies. It's the North Star that connects every department and every person to something bigger than their role.
Vision simplifies. It gives you a filter for decisions: does this move us closer to our vision?
Vision inspires. When people can see the future they're helping build, they bring their best energy to it.
One of my favorite moments is when a CEO pauses and says, "I actually haven't thought about what I want this company to look like in five years." Just as often, the CEO already has a vision. It's just never been written down. Either way, that's when the exciting work begins.
| Busy without a vision | Aligned around a vision |
|---|---|
| Priorities shift week to week | Priorities ladder up to a directional destination |
| Every decision runs through the CEO | Leaders make calls using a shared filter |
| Hiring for today's gaps | Hiring for the company you're becoming |
| Strategy is a list of tactics | Strategy is the path to the vision |
| People do their jobs | People know why their work matters |
How do you build a company vision?
Building a company vision starts with slowing down, just enough to see clearly. Here's a rough breakdown of a how to identify your vision:
Clarify your purpose. Why does your company exist beyond profit? What problem are you uniquely here to solve?
Define the future state. Imagine your business three to five years from now. What does it look like? Who are you serving? What's changed? This is where I love using a Vivid Vision (more on that below).
Set the non-negotiables. What values and principles will you never compromise, no matter how fast you grow?
Share and align. A vision only becomes real when it's shared. Communicate it early and often, so your team can align their goals and actions around it.
What is a Vivid Vision?
A Vivid Vision is one of my favorite tools for making the future feel real. Created by Cameron Herold, author of Vivid Vision, it's a few pages written in the present tense that describe your company three years from now in rich detail: what customers are saying, what the culture feels like, how the team works, and what you're known for. It's not a list of numbers. It's a picture people can step into.
The magic is in sharing it. When your whole team, and even your customers and partners, can read the same picture of the future, they start making decisions that move you toward it, without being told.
We capture this in a Vivid Vision, a simple statement, or the top of your One-Page Strategic Plan or Vision Summary. More importantly, we make it live in meetings, hiring, goal-setting, and daily decisions.
How does Future-Back thinking turn vision into a plan?
Future-Back thinking is how vision becomes strategy. Instead of planning forward from where you are today, you start from the future you've described and work backward.
Most planning runs present-forward: take this year's numbers, add 10%, and call it a plan. That keeps you anchored to today's constraints. Future-Back flips it. You stand in the future first, then ask:
If this is where we'll be in three to five years, what has to be true in three years?
What has to be true by the end of this year?
What has to happen this quarter to get us there?
Each answer becomes the next rung on the ladder. The three-year picture shapes your annual priorities, and your annual priorities shape your quarterly Rocks. It's the same logic behind the One-Page Strategic Plan, and it's how I work with every CEO: we picture the destination first, then build the path back to today.
How does vision fit into scaling a company?
Vision is the anchor for every system that makes growth sustainable. At Avanti Scaling, we help companies implement the operating rhythms that make scaling work, but those systems only work when they're anchored in something meaningful.
Vision shapes your strategy. It informs your priorities. It connects your people to a shared purpose. When the vision is clear, everything else (the operating system, execution, accountability) becomes simpler and more powerful.
Without it, you can have all the structure in the world and still feel scattered.
Key takeaways
Start with vision before strategy, because a strategy is only as good as the destination it's pointed at.
Vision starts with the leader at the top, and if that leader isn't clear, the leadership team won't be either.
A strong vision unifies, simplifies decisions, and inspires your people.
Use Future-Back thinking: start from the future you want, then work backward to this year's priorities and this quarter's Rocks.
A vision becomes real only when the team can repeat it and it shows up in meetings, hiring, and goals.
Frequently asked questions
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Vision is where you're going and why it matters. Strategy is how you'll win on the way there. Vision comes first, because you can't choose the best route until you know the destination.
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Most leadership teams find three to five years the right range for a vivid, specific picture. Scaling Up also uses a 10- to 25-year BHAG for the big, long-term goal.
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A BHAG is one bold, measurable goal 10 to 25 years out, a big idea from Jim Collins that Verne Harnish built into Scaling Up. A Vivid Vision, from Cameron Herold, is a detailed, three-year picture of what the whole company looks and feels like. The BHAG is the mountain. The Vivid Vision describes the base camp you'll reach along the way.
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Yes. The bigger the team gets, the less the CEO can be in every conversation. A written, shared vision lets leaders make aligned decisions without routing everything back to the top.
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The CEO leads it, and the leadership team shapes it. A coach can help pressure-test what the CEO already believes and turn it into something the whole team owns.
If you're a CEO, start here. Take an hour this week to step back and ask: What are we really building? Why does it matter to me and to my team? What does success look like in three years? Write it down. Share it. Talk about it until people start quoting it back to you. That's when you know vision is alive.
Because scaling isn't just about building bigger. It's about building on purpose.
This is where I begin every engagement: helping founders and CEOs clarify, communicate, and operationalize their vision so growth feels aligned and intentional. If you'd like to explore how to bring your vision to life, let's talk.
