The Visionary Responsibility: Show Them What You See

The BOLD (Visionary to Leader)

Creative disruptors, the ones who live in the flow of ideas and who invest their curiosity in breaking things to make them better, have a big challenge.  

In amongst all those ideas flowing through these fertile minds are the seeds of solutions that we all need.  To get those seeds to grow, they must be cultivated, watered, and exposed to the sun.  They need other people’s work.

The Creative Disruptor becomes the Visionary Leader when they design the clarity that communicates the vision, delivers the plan, convinces about urgency, and ignites inspiration.  

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A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The Whisper (Cast the Vision)

You sit bolt upright in bed and your gaze darts to the clock.  It’s 2 am.  What woke you from your slumber?  The answer to the question you didn’t even realize you were asking yourself as you drifted off to sleep hours earlier. It is a perfect idea, a vision of a solution that would deliver a profit while answering an unfulfilled need in your market.  

There are a few roadblocks between you and that amazing outcome.  

First, you’re still groggy and there’s a good chance that if you don’t madly scribble down the skeleton of your idea, it will have evaporated by the morning.  

Second, there are some fuzzy points in the path from problem to solution that will still need to be worked out. 

Third, you can’t do this alone and you’re going to need team buy-in.  

Think about it:

• Ideas stay ideas until action makes them into a result.  
• The people around the visionary often can’t see what the visionary sees.  
• The idea requires the work of more than just the visionary to become a reality.

• Therefore, it is the responsibility of the visionary to design clarity so that they can cast that vision.  Other people need to see the vision, understand the plan, and be ignited with a desire to make the vision a reality.  

We utilize design principles to create the clearest version of the vision.  

• We must understand the opportunity or the challenge that provoked the need for a solution.  
• We must define the question we are asking and determine our obstacles and resources.  
• We must refine the plan and prioritize the actions.
• We must test our assumptions.  
• Solid implementation isn’t likely until design a way forward inspired by our vision.

Our responsibility extends to our communication as well.  We have a responsibility to hone our skills for transmitting information, crafting the vision into a tangible image they can see, and igniting action with stirring speech.  Our words move the vision from an idea to a reality because they generate connection, invite input, ignite inspiration, and transmit the plan.  

The visionary has a responsibility to design clarity so that the vision is visible to those who currently can’t see it.  

The visionary has a responsibility to move from visionary dreamer to visionary leader.  

At the same time, there is no obligation to sacrifice ourselves while doing so (and that is a discussion for another day).