A vision is the revelation of the picture of fulfilled purpose shown to guide through set pathways to the end where the purpose is fulfilled.
Visions can be personal or corporate. Each of us was born for a purpose. The purpose is what we are to pursue on the earth. It is what constitutes work for us as individuals. The purpose for which we live forms the vision we see and run towards to fulfil.
The other form of vision is the corporate vision. This is the kind of vision that is employed when more than one personal visions have to be fulfilled. It is such that when it is fulfilled, it provides a better platform for individuals to fulfil their personal visions more easily.
The corporate vision is what leaders engage to lead their people to their preferred world where they can maximize their potentials and make for themselves a life commensurate to their possibilities. With a corporate vision, a leader motivates his or her team to employ their resources to pursue their utmost possibilities.
This is what visionary leaders do. Leadership is essentially an influence backed with authority derived from the people. It is for the people and they empower the leader through their submissions and obedience to leadership authority towards their own freedom, prosperity and well-being.
Just as a personal vision instills definitive discipline in the person to get it fulfilled, a corporate vision also discovers what's good and bad for the fulfillment of the vision, and from that, necessary disciplines evolve to form the discipline required in both the leader and the people for the achievement of the vision.
Such corporate visions make responsible leadership and voluntary following the norm. One of the disciplines that corporate vision instils is focus. The focus is shifted from the pursuit of personal visions to that of the corporate vision from where personal visions are naturally fulfilled.
The irony however is that, we may have a corporate vision without a visionary leader, or a visionary leader without a proper corporate vision that captures the possibilities available for a people group. In which case the visionary leader must first discover a vision for his or her people to pursue before lifting a finger, otherwise, he or she ceases to be a leader but a manager.
There is a difference between a leader and a manager. A manager will maintain anything to produce to a good percentage of its capacity even if what it produces has no significant impact or effect.
But a leader seeks to break through frontiers via forceful momentum to conquer new grounds beyond maintaining conquered territories. There is maintenance with managers but there's forward movement with leaders.
The worst possibilities are in not having a visionary leader, not even having the ideologies that make them, and/or not having a corporate vision, but lots of personal visions by which those in positions manage the affairs of a corporate body to its detriments. They enslave the people and yoke them to produce for their own lusts.
With a personal vision or none at all, a leader manages corporate resources for personal fulfillment without discipline. He measures progress only by the amount of his or her desires that are satisfied and not by the possibilities achieved for the people through corporate resources.
If you are a leader, are you a visionary leader taking his or her people from where you met them to their preferred possibilities?
If you are a follower, are you sure you're following a visionary leader taking you to a place of potential realization and preferred preferences? You may need to ask your leader what the overall vision might be!
Good morning to you as we celebrate Nigeria's independence tomorrow!