Introduction to Vision

How our Vision tool helps you document a clear and compelling Vision to align your teams.

Written by Tommy Mains

Updated at September 20th, 2024

What Is the Vision Tool?

Use our Vision tool to plan, organize, and document your organization's Vision. We have four pages in the tool to keep everything clear and organized. Your Vision is customizable, so you can use the terms and sections that work best for you.

Watch the video below for a general overview of the tool.

 

How a Documented Vision Supports Your Organization

Having a detailed, documented Vision shared with your whole organization offers the following:

  • Transparency — Your team members and other Ideal Stakeholders understand the organization's definition of itself and the expression of its highest, long-term aims.
  • Purpose — With full awareness of where the organization's Vision wants to go, teams and individuals can ensure they're tying their daily work, Rocks, KPIs, and more to the Vision.
  • Clarity — A clear and compelling Vision is a combination of Focus Filters everyone in the organization can use to filter their decisions through.

 

In short, if we genuinely want something, we’re wise to embrace a set of Focus Filters that are clear and compelling. Filters make it possible to determine what everyone in our company should say Yes to and when they should say No. When you and your team are collectively willing to say No to everything that doesn’t make it through your Focus Filters, we’re confident you’ll be on the path to building an extraordinarily focused, aligned, and thriving organization. 

 

From our 90u Library, Vision Builders Workbook

 

How the Vision Tool Supports Ninety's Other Tools

Our Vision tool is particularly important for your organization's leadership team. They can choose which pieces of the Vision are shared with other teams and allow team leaders to customize portions of the Vision for their specific teams.

Click through the tabs below to learn more about how the Vision tool supports some of our other core tools.

Rocks

Rocks are 90-day goals and projects that keep your teams moving toward their long-term goals. On the Goals page of the Vision tool, you can see your team's company/departmental goals, your Compelling and Audacious Goal(s), and the financial markers and KPIs for the next 90-days, 1-year, and 3-year periods.

 
 

Issues

Your team's long-term Issues list from the Issues Tool also appears on the Vision tool's Long-Term Issues page. Leadership team members can choose which long-term Issues can be seen by other teams by clicking the Public toggle on a leadership team long-term Issue's details card.

 

 
 

Meetings

If you're just beginning to implement your Business Operating System (BOS), our Meetings tool has agendas for your leadership team's three alignment sessions.

Read about these meetings below:

 
 

 

Ninety's Default Vision Organizer

The Vision tool begins with four pages:

  1. Vision
  2. Goals
  3. Long-Term Issues
  4. SWOT

Click through the tabs below to read about how best to use these pages.

Vision

The Vision page includes sections to document your:

  • Core Values — A set of guiding principles and behaviors that an organization desires to see consistently embodied by its team members.
  • Purpose — Also referred to as Purpose, Passion, and/or Just Cause or your Compelling Why, this section describes the reason your organization exists (Purpose), the powerful emotions that influence you (Passion), and/or a future state so appealing that you're willing to go the extra mile to work toward it (Just Cause).
  • Niche — Your Industry and Niche is a primary Focus Filter for your Vision, it describes what kind of business you're in and what you provide to that industry's market.
  • Marketing Strategy
    • Ideal Customer — Customers who embody a specific mix of geographic (where they are), demographic (who they are), and psychographic (what they want) characteristics.
    • Unique Value Proposition — A company’s value creation promise to its customers, usually one of the following: cost, innovation, customer service, or status.
    • Proven Process — Your organization's tried-and-true steps to acquire and retain customers.
    • Guarantee — A promise from you to your customers.
 
 

Goals

The Goals page offers a one-page or one-screen look at your Compelling and Audacious Goals (CAGs), 3-year goals, 1-year goals, and 90-day goals. For the three sections below your CAGs, you can enter the following information:

  • Future Date — The targeted due date to complete the goal(s).
  • Revenue — Your gross revenue earned.
  • Profit — Your net profit after expenses.
  • KPIs — The key performance indicators you'll use to measure success.
  • Goals — This area is different for each section; it lists certain mile markers or Rocks that you aim to have completed by the future date.
 
 

Long-Term Issues

Your team's long-term Issues list also appears on the Vision tool's Long-Term Issues page. 

 
 

SWOT

Record and update a SWOT analysis for your team or organization right on our platform.

 
 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Who can see the leadership team's Vision?

Every user assigned a role in your Directory can view the Vision tool.

To share or stop sharing the leadership team's Vision, click the Share Vision toggle on or off.

 
 

How do I send certain sections of the Vision to other teams?

To share individual sections of the leadership team's Vision (such as Core Values):

  1. Click the gear icon at the far right of the Filters bar.
  2. Click the Custom Vision toggle on.
  3. Click Close.
  4. Click the pencil icon on any card of the Vision or Goals pages.
  5. Click the Cascade to all teams toggle on (saves automatically).
 
 

 

Looking for the V/TO®?

We have a full Help Center for EOS® users; read about the V/TO® here.