Vision matters. But not the “we build the best product” kind. Long-lasting winners pair a stable core purpose with a bold, measurable customer outcome. If your vision talks features, you are building fragility, not longevity.
What the research shows
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras studied 18 visionary firms (3M, IBM, HP, Disney, P&G, Walmart, Sony and others). The firms that kept a clear core ideology while chasing a vivid future outperformed the market by a large margin. The lesson is simple: keep what matters but make your future about customer impact.
Read more: Jim Collins – Articles – Building Companies to Last
Where most companies go wrong
Too many visions read like product roadmaps: more features, bigger product lines, higher revenue. That is inward looking. The organisations that last frame success as the change they deliver for customers.
Customer needs and wants are constantly evolving, so products must follow and adapt. The organisations that last frame success as the change they deliver for customers.
A practical three-step swap
Use this with your leadership team.
- Diagnose: Run a short, focused session with the leadership team to map current vision, mission and values and surface the top customer jobs, pains and gains.
- Reframe: Use the Value Proposition Canvas to move from product features to customer jobs, pains and gains. Distil one crisp, testable customer-outcome sentence.
- Communicate: Embed the new wording in rituals, scorecards and frontline scripts so the vision guides decisions every day.
Moving left to right means translating product features into the customer needs, it enables and the measurable result it delivers: pick a feature, ask “what job/pain/gain does this solve for the customer?”
Value Proposition Canvas – Download the Official Template
Why this works
A customer-centred vision aligns product, marketing, service and incentives. It helps you keep up with ever-evolving customer needs and wants, makes trade-offs obvious and forces leaders to measure what matters.
Want the toolkit we use in workshops? Download the template and diagnostic worksheet here:
https://maxsabet.com/downloads/your-must-have-template-for-building-vision