Having a vision for your business is vital; it paints a picture of success that your whole company can work towards. It sets expectations for your stakeholders, employees, and even customers. Not only does a clear vision provide a purpose for your company—“Why are we doing this?” —but it also helps you to stay motivated when times get rough. Overcoming challenges is certainly easier if you are aware of your motive to keep going.
But having a clear vision can’t help all that much if your employees aren’t aware of it, or don’t feel connected to it. In order for your employees to live your vision, they both need to have access to it and need to see the reason behind it. So here are our top 3 tips on how you can align your employees with your vision.
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#1 mind the details
Certainly, your vision is something broad, big, and inspiring; it is your company’s north star, the one overarching goal you are working towards. It should encompass your long- and short-term goals while reflecting your company's core values. Since your vision should therefore function as a guide for your employees, you need to ensure that it offers a clear picture not just of what your goal is, but also of how to reach it. That means not only explaining the “Why”, but also sharing the “How”.
Often employees are left alone with this huge vision, and it is then up to them how to interpret and fulfill it. This leaves lots of room for misunderstandings that could potentially turn into decisions that don’t align with your vision. Hence, it is your and your leaders' responsibility to make sure that your employees’ contributions support your vision. What this looks like may differ from one department to another, so you need to be even more detailed oriented. Each department needs to know what their share of work is and how it impacts the bigger picture.
#2 reinforce
Your employees are always working on their daily and weekly tasks and goals, so if no one encourages them to keep your vision in mind, then they probably won’t. That is why you need to be persistent and find ways to show everyone how their tasks contribute to the long-term vision. Simply writing your vision on your website and telling your employees about it during the onboarding process is not enough.
We want to share a use case of one of our customers who used audvice to increase internal knowledge sharing. In order to communicate their mission, vision, and values internally, they started producing video interviews with managers and executives. They would have loved to get more employees involved, but many didn’t want to be in front of a camera. The production of these videos was both time and money intensive; it took roughly an hour of filming to get a 15-minute video. It was therefore difficult to find time when everyone was available. When they started using audvice, not only could they get more people on board, but there was suddenly no need for expensive equipment or hours of time, since recording a playlist directly in the audvice app took them only 15 minutes. They were ultimately able to cut production time by 75% and were still able to do interviews and monologues to convey their vision in a personal way.
#3 get your employees involved
The easiest way to bring your employees on board with your vision is to have them participate in defining it. It is important to have everybody on one page, especially with something as important as your vision. Creating this vision together gives everybody a feeling of shared responsibility. If you encourage employees to share their opinions and thoughts, you will empower them to feel and become a part of something bigger. It only makes sense that you live a vision that you partly created yourself.
Of course, your ability to successfully get all your employees involved is a question of organization, resources, and time. Setting up multiple calls during which everyone shares their input and ideas, or creating a shared doc for everyone to write in, won’t allow you to provide the context and feedback that are necessary.
Instead, you can use Audvice for company-wide brainstorming. Simply start a playlist, add an intro track to it where you share the draft of your vision, and tell your employees what opinions you would like to hear from them and until when. You can share this playlist throughout your whole company, and every employee who has something to say can add their own track to it. You will be left with a collection of valuable input that is able to provide the right context, from all company levels, and that took no time to acquire. In addition, you can listen to this playlist whenever it is best for you: while doing the laundry, taking your dog on a walk, or commuting.
All in all, a transparent and encouraging vision that allows all your employees to work towards a higher goal ensures that everyone follows the same journey while walking on their own path. If you want to know more about how Audvice can help you achieve this, make sure to get started for free today!