At its simplest, a vision is a representation of the company's core values and purpose – its identity, if you like – combined with a visualization of the company's envisaged future. The vision serves both to provide inspiration and a sense of what needs to be done; a guiding principle. In entrepreneurial companies, the vision is often a mental representation created in the mind of the founder or leader.

True to its name, a vision often tends to more of an image than a fully articulated plan. That leaves it flexible in how it is executed, so that the company can adapt it to its experiences.

We invent, engineer and deliver technology solutions that drive business value, create social value and improve the lives of our customers. – HP

Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. – Amazon.com

We will grow by helping our customers win - through the ingenuity and responsiveness of people who care. – 3M

A vision is not a strategy. A strategy is the outline of a plan embodying specific choices for achieving the vision. HP has a very clear vision articulated in The HP Way. The vision may be summarized as making people's lives better through technical products. This vision may initially have been implemented through a strategy of developing electronic test equipment, but over the years it has taken the company into many other, unrelated areas.

Amazon could have articulated their vision as being “The Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” but that fails on the longevity test: a vision should essentially be unreachable. It is there to guide you and give you identity and direction, somewhat like a navigational star on the horizon which you always sail towards but never reach. The current statement of being a single source for all you shopping needs online does pass that test and provides plenty of inspiration for extending the implementation strategy. Expect to see many more tabs on the web site interface representing different shopping areas.

The Amazon vision also passes the second test: it helps define what the company does not do. It is an online store, not a high-street outlet. In this way, the vision actively helps the company’s managers deciding among investment opportunities.

Similarly, 3M does not define itself in terms of yellow Post-It® notes but rather through helping its customers to win by solving previously unsolved problems through innovation and creativity. This led the company so sell a number of mature business units in order to better focus of the core of innovation and ingenuity.

We have seen too many so-called vision statements that essentially boils down to “maximizing shareholder returns”. Perhaps this is an occupational hazard from frequently being called upon to support companies at a time when they are looking for new finance through private equity or other investors. Let me make my experiences clear: it isn't a vision statement and it will not help you raise funds.

It is not a vision statement because it doesn't help you make decisions about what to do and what not to do. It doesn't limit you and it doesn't guide you. It doesn't motivate your company: do you really know anybody who will put their heart and soul, long hours and a sizable fraction of their natural lives into your next project solely on the prospect that it may add another few cents to your earnings per share?

It is not lasting: if you won the lottery, if everybody in your company won the lottery, and you had no investors and no financial concerns, would you still get into work the next day?

Similarly, a vision along the line of "we exist to make widget X" fails the tests. It is not lasting: what happens when there is no market for X? It is not unattainable. And while it may be motivational in the short or even medium term, the motivation does not last over periods where they may be no demand for X, or when Y turns out to be better.

Five points for a successful core ideology

So your vision, your core ideology, has to be:

1. Lasting and unattainable
   (the 100+ year plan, no matter what happens)
2. Unattainable and inspiring
   (the guiding star)
3. Inspiring and limiting
   (what we do and what we don’t do)
4. Limiting and motivational
   (why do we go to work?)
5. Motivational and lasting
   (a reason, now and tomorrow)

Warren Bennisi puts it more succinctly: if it really is a vision, you'll never forget it. That, and perhaps adding and you'll never want to forget it, is the golden rule for vision statements. A vision should first and foremost rouse the organization's emotional and spiritual resources and leave it to research and strategy to speak to the analytical and intellectual capabilities within the organization.

Tomorrow: How to discover your vision