Paul Sloane explains the ABC vision framework leaders need: appealing, believable, challenging. He contrasts managers who execute with leaders who set direction, citing Jack Welch on owning your vision, and stresses repeating it constantly while letting teams figure out how to get there.
Chapters
A manager works in an organization, but a leader works on an organization. The leader always changes their business. They always take it from one place to somewhere else. They take their team, their business, their organization on a journey. And to do that, you need a vision. You need to set the destination, the goal, what you're trying to achieve. Jack Welch, the famous CEO of General Electric, said, a great leader creates a vision, communicates the vision, owns the vision, and drives it to completion. And I believe that your vision statement should be 3 things, ABC: appealing, believable, and challenging. It should be appealing. It should be something worthwhile. We're going to make the world a better place through this. It should be believable, something that people can believe, it's credible, and it should be challenging. And that means it's a stretch, it's not easy. You're going to ask a lot of people. And once you've set the vision, you communicate it over and over again because otherwise it fades from view. And you explain to people what their role is in achieving the vision, why their role is crucial. And you can let, as far as possible, you can let them choose how they do that. Your job as a leader is to set the destination, but to let your team choose the route. And if you do that, you can get a group of passionate people who are entrepreneurs, who are really driving the business forward to achieve the vision.
