Who knows what our working world will look like in ten years’ time? Maybe we won’t even go to work anymore, but send our personal avatar to the office, while we ourselves take a walk in the woods and are only responsible for the complicated cases. Maybe we don’t even have to leave the forest for these complicated cases, and we don’t have to use a device like a cell phone; we can see what’s going on directly through a lens in our eye. Admit it – that’s both an attractive and scary thought, but it’s definitely quite visionary, isn’t it?
However, this is not yet a vision. To do this, it would have to be discussed whether the idea is really something worth pursuing in such a way that the company is changed and strategic measures are derived from it. A vision is therefore an “attractive target state to be achieved “43.(43 Kerstin Stolzenberg and Krischan Heberle: Change Management – Veränderungsprozesse erfolgreich gestalten: Mobilizing Employees. Vision, Communication, Participation, Qualification, (Springer Verlag 2013), p.15.)
In this way, the vision and its necessity are also embedded in the digital transformation: In order to take employees along on the journey into the digital world, they need a desirable target state that is anchored in their minds in such a way that the change called digital transformation is accepted, if not even encouraged.
The striving for this state is verbalized in the vision. “The vision is the common thread that measures should follow in the context of the change, that provides a basis for decisions and that offers those affected the opportunity to deal with the future changes. “44 (44 Ibid.,p.17.) If there is no vision for the digital transformation in the company, the digital transformation will fail. And even a good vision is useless if it has not reached and touched every employee in the organization – so in addition to the vision itself, communicating it is also essential.
The vision has a meaningful effect on the employees and is, so to speak, the glue that holds everything together, so it must also show why you want to achieve this target state.
The forefather of all change guidance, John P. Kotter45(45 John P. Kotter: Chaos Wandel Führung (Econ 1998).), lists six essential characteristics that a vision must have in order to “work.”
– Imaginable: It creates a clear picture of what the future will look like. – Desirable: All stakeholders feel addressed by it and are behind it. – Feasible: Realistic and achievable goals are anchored.
– Focused: It is worded clearly enough to serve as a decision-making tool.
– Flexible: If circumstances change, the vision can be adapted.
– Communicable: They are easy to communicate and quick to explain.