Last year, I met a CEO whose leadership reminded me of a blindfolded boda-boda rider in the middle of Kampala traffic, full throttle, dodging potholes, trusting the wind to take him somewhere useful. His team was working hard, his board was impressed with PowerPoint slides, but the company was going in circles. Why? Because their vision, the one that was meant to provide direction, was a fancy sentence no one remembered and no one followed.
That’s your leadership issue this week: You are working hard, you have good people, but you can not scale. Because your vision, the thing meant to anchor your decisions and inspire your people, is vague, lifeless, and meaningless.
Stop managing motion and start clarifying direction.
Growing up in Munteme village, Kikuube district, we used to walk to school. You didn’t waste time stepping just to be seen stepping, you moved directly. Without direction, effort was useless. Same in business. Effort without vision leads to burnout without a breakthrough.
During a culture transformation assignment at a financial institution, I asked each board member to write down their vision statement from memory. Not one of them got it right. They all gave variations of the same useless phrase: “To be the leading provider of innovative financial solutions in the region.” I asked, “Which region? Leading in what? By when?” That’s when the silence confirmed what I suspected: this was a slogan, not a vision.
Too many companies confuse branding with clarity. They create statements that sound good but lead nowhere. If your vision can be used by any bank, NGO, telco, or even a cement manufacturer, it’s not a vision. It’s a motivational poster with your logo.
Signs your vision is just corporate decoration
- a) It cannot be recalled or explained by your leadership team.
- b) It’s so vague that it could apply to any business in your sector.
- c) It doesn’t create enemies. If everyone agrees with it, it’s too safe.
- d) It doesn’t guide product decisions, hiring, or investment choices.
At the bank, once we stripped away the fluff and focused on strategic intent, we rebuilt the vision: “To bank one million underserved women-led businesses by 2030 through mobile-first solutions.” Suddenly, priorities aligned. Strategy gained teeth. Teams could measure success. That’s a real vision; it creates direction, drives alignment, and makes trade-offs obvious.
How to fix it: make your vision dangerous again
Real vision should make your competitors uncomfortable and your people excited. It should be clear enough to drive action and bold enough to make failure a real possibility. At a manufacturing company, we changed their vision from “To be the leading regional packaging firm” to “To eliminate all imported plastic packaging from Zambia by 2028.” That’s when things changed. Teams had a purpose. Competitors took notice. And employees stopped asking for “motivation.”
Leadership challenge of the week
Take your current vision statement and delete your company name from it. Now ask five employees from different departments: “Whose vision is this?” If they can’t confidently say it’s yours, your vision is not working. It’s cosmetic.
Leadership tool-The Vision Drilldown
To rebuild a proper vision, answer these four brutal questions:
- Where exactly are we going? (Name the market, number, or year.)
- Who will be better off or disrupted if we win?
- What will we say ‘no’ to focus?
- Why should a frontline staff member care?
No emotion = no energy. No direction = no discipline.
So I ask you, not your PR team: Is your vision leading your company? Or is it just something you recite at AGMs?
See you next Tuesday.
