Just as we act on what is important to us, the same is true for an organization (considered as a whole). This is why there is so much discussion of vision, mission and values: they act as drivers behind all that is strategic within the organization. I remember a good point from one of my graduate texts where the prescriptive advice was for mission and vision to contain simplicity and intentional ambiguity. The authors suggested that the organization’s vision  should be “a simple statement of where a firm is going, and what the firm’s leaders want it to be in the future. A statement of vision is forward-looking and identifies the firm’s desired long-term status.” Ambiguity has the benefit of enabling flexibility where “changing strategy or implementation tactics when it looks as if business as usual isn’t going to realize the expressed vision.” This forms a framework of business strategy that is not to be confused with a granular to-do list, but offers guidelines to be selected and applied to a particular organization (as it exists at that moment in time), and its particular strategic plan that is driving the mission, vision and values to completion.

From here, the leadership team must lead with organizational effectiveness.  As outlined in Michael Porter’s What is Strategy, written decades ago in the Harvard Business Review, there must be organizational efficiency and effectiveness for a firm to realize its strategic goals, wherever those goals will lead. This is where the giftedness of a chief executive to attract and lead a team that will take the organization to strategic success, utilizing the particular expertise represented by each of the components of the leadership team. In order to be successful, this same leader will actually look for people who possess greater strengths than his or her own (in a given area) for the cumulative benefits and success of the organization as a whole. This team will work in the context of strategic coherence. The simple but significant takeaway is that the components of a strategic framework function together, in a harmonious fashion that continuously moves the ball down field toward goals that are expressed with clarity or what has been described as, “a burning imperative.”