Vision Creation and Execution

December 27, 2008 · Comments

iron Man It’s one in the morning. I’m up because I’m agitated. I just watched the special features disk for the movie Iron Man, and something clicked in my head. It came from watching the movie’s director, Jon Favreau, expand out his vision from his own head to several hundred people working on the film. We need to talk a bit about how these all fit together.

The Three Layers

In filmmaking, vision comes from translating a story into motion. Mixed into the process of that story translation is the art of synthesis: take something from there, over there, and this bit here, and make it into a finished product. The director must have a vision that stretches far beyond the practical, and considers all facets of a production, from the eyes of the audience, from the plausibility of the technology, to the saleability of the product and ancillary materials to make the effort a financial success as well. That’s all on the top layer and ties to vision.

After vision comes creation. Favreau can’t make all these ideas come to life. He can only tell the story to capable people, who then must seek methods and means to fulfill those ideas. It’s this process that engages people like Industrial Light and Magic, The Orphanage, and The Embassy to create visual effects. It requres Favreau to leave huge chunks of the actual production of the movie up to other people, but with his vision guiding it all.

There is no movie without execution. The creators require legions of workers to execute these interpretations of the vision. Each piece of production, from craft services delivering hot food to the person pouring plaster molds for Robert Downey Jr.’s feet to make sure they fit inside the Iron Man boots. Without execution, vision is just a dream.

Apply This to Your Efforts

You might not be the Jon Favreau of your organization. You might not be the person tasked with defining the vision. Remember: there’s nothing without the creation and execution phases. Without a powerful mind working with your visionary storyteller (or CEO or president), that storyteller can only do so much. And none of this matters without people executing on the creations built from the vision.

Know where you are in that spectrum (and it might be more than one role – probably is more than one role often), and do your part exceptionally well. If you’re the visionary, and you don’t have a creator and people to execute, how much do you really believe you’ll accomplish. If you’re the creator, and you can’t move beyond coming up with neat ways to do things into how to make them drive value back to the stakeholders, how long will you be in the role of creating? If you’re tasked with executing, do it. Not much more I can say about that part.

It’s simple, and yet, not. Can you adapt it to your universe? Who sets the vision in your company? Who is the creator that builds the vision for your church? Are you the person tasked with executing your community’s projects?

None of these roles is easy, and they each require a different skillset. Maybe now’s the time to realize which one you’re best at, and then find the people to augment your abilities. Hint: you need far fewer visionaries than you need executors, but creators seem to be the clutch role in any organization.

Which one are you?

Photo credit Kevitivity

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Tagged as: , , , ,

ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress

Thesis WordPress theme

Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.

With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like ChrisBrogan.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.

  • If you are a small one-gal business like me, then you have to wear all the hats! Otherwise, I tend to be more visionary-creative type, so execution and of things like accounting and project maintenance is something I have to really work at to get things done! Goog thing about starting small and doing it all though, is if you do grow, then you have an idea for what people are actually doing, and can project lead better.
  • I think a lot can also depend on the visionary (leader) as well. If the leader is one that believes only they can have the vision to see something's best practice, then it doesn't matter how much a visionary they might feel they are, their product will suffer.

    Be the leader that listens to the "ranks" and then the magic will truly happen.
  • Chris, great analogy. Whichever hat one wears, I think it is crucial to understand how it all plays together. Skill sets merging with collaboration - all for the excellent end product. It's what truly makes the world work!
  • And herein lies the rub for many a project, an organization, an idea.

    With all of these roles comes responsibility and the ability to let go. To trust others. The muddling happens when the visionary refuses to acknowledge that the creators and executors have the chops to make it happen. Or the creator wishes they were the visionary, and can't let go of their ego long enough to realize someone *else's* vision. Or the worker can't see beyond their functional role and understand how it drives the bigger engine.

    Defining the roles isn't the hard part. It's embracing whichever is truly yours. It's taken me a long time to learn that I'm the creator. I'm not the one with the big idea. But I'm the one to take the big idea and make it real. Deconstruct and disassemble it. Knowing that is great, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to having moments where I felt inadequate for not being the visionary. Like I'm missing a gene or something because I can't crank out groundbreaking ideas.

    Visionaries - at least successful ones - are often the ones that ultimately realize they need an army behind them. But rarely do you hear an executor saying "gee, I wish I had someone else's great idea to implement". So how, then, do we encourage others to own and believe in their *piece* of the vision? The challenge to me is not just in finding the workers to make the vision real. It's in finding the visionaries that can translate their passion well enough to make those workers want to embrace their roles in the first place.
  • This is a great piece on leadership. Amber has many good ideas. I just wrote a post tonite underlining that trust & respect are needed.

    Working with an organization that doesn't have a vision is extremely frustrating. I think that it needs to be a concerted effort. Yes, someone is ultimately responsible, but I think it's their responsibility to encourage everyone to share their ideas for the common good of the organization. The company that I'm presently with has a leader that does the executing, but also provides the vision. The amazing thing is that he's created a transparent organization & encourages everyone to contribute to the vision. And I'm allowed to be creative in executing my work.

    So it can be a mix. I don't think that they're all distinctly separate. I enjoy participating in all 3 aspects.
  • Hi Chris!

    My take-away from this is that as a leader you must know that you are accountable for everything, but you don't have to do it all yourself. Outsourcing (i.e. delegating) your tasks is a master skill each one of us could appreciate very much if we're one-person operation. The leader is the keeper of the vision, the rest help you enhance the vision, help you execute the vision, or both.

    All the Best!

    Regards,

    Erwin Chua
    Winning To Win With Erwin Chua!
    http://winning2win.com

    Follow Me on Twitter!
    http://www.twitter.com/waywalker0101
  • Chris -

    Great and engaging analogy between film making and business. Everyone needs to clearly understand their role in the vision creation, planning, and execution phases, but hopefully also be empowered to contribute to the other roles of the endeavor. A good leader solicits inputs from her organization into her vision creation process, and engages them in multiple "vetting" sessions to make sure the vision is tight.

    I think the key disconnect in the analogy with the business world is that on a film project, every person involved knows exactly why they are there, and are by definition, "bought in" to the project. One of the most important challenges that I've always struggled with as a business leader is making my vision compelling and energizing so that my troops automatically rally and really want to drive the execution of the vision towards reality. Sometimes, if the vision takes the company into new and unfamiliar spaces, this might not be as easy as it appears. But that is the leadership challenge.

    Thanks for a thought-provoking post.

    @JeffreyJDavis
  • In the current state of the social media scene, everyone is Jon Favreau.

    We all have ideas and visions, finding those stage hands, people to bring food, and people to craft the foot molds - well, they just aren't here....yet.

    Hollywood's been around for a very long time, so it's not really a fair comparison.
    An old school, established industry compared to a fledgling, still defining itself, new way of doing things - not fair.

    I did like the Iron Man movie, too.

    Thanks for the great post.
  • Barry Curnow
    it's a helpful perspective, I have always been impressed by my coaching clients who are film or tv producers that they have a highly developed and comprehensive range of managerial, leadership and influencing skills in creating temporary total communities and then dismantling them again. perhaps therein lies a difference, that organisations tend to have an average life of about 50 years ( still less than the average human in most coutnries) but film production communities tend to be shorter-1-3 or at most 7 years, I guess?
  • Chris,

    Dang. I write about Vision all the time and you just said it way, way better. *hangs head* One of your best posts.

    Jeffrey said "... on a film project, every person involved knows exactly why they are there, and are by definition, “bought in” to the project."

    Something else I love to talk about. Buy-in is number one, because as you said, there's only so much space for visionaries.

    Every executor of the overarching Vision needs his or her own vision, too: the vision of how critical their part is, the vision of what just how far they can take their own position and what exceeding expectations could mean to the business (or the project). Companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, WholeFoods, Southwest Airlines, have this on all levels.

    Great companies hire staff who buy in to the big picture, and who are smart enough, ambitious enough, and creative enough to create a "big" picture around the role they have to play in the business.

    Thanks, I really enjoyed reading this!

    Regards,

    Kelly
  • Great post, thoughtful comments and a good model for collaboration. If you think about it, it has parallels to a top-down client-server model. The director (server) serves up vision which is pushed out to the client desktops (creators, executors). In fact it's a multi-layered architecture, with each of the creators serving as a hub for executors.

    Which of course brings out my radical populist side since a client-server architecture implies a hierarchy. Where are the good P2P models for collaboration? (Think more broadly before replying "a wiki"; a wiki is a tool, not a collaboration model. And there's still only one Jimmy Wales.) Does P2P collaboration work (and, if it does, does it scale?) Brainstorming & visioneering sessions involving executors & creators can come across as transparent attempts to get the rank and file to feel engaged while they execute the visionary's pre-ordained strategy. On the other hand, collaboration without hierarchy often doesn't work; it's led to some ideologically pristine and artistically bad music, for example.

    Amber's comment on the need to embrace whichever role is yours is on-target. In my experience two things are needed to make it work at all levels: humility and trust.
  • I love the post. I do not have much time to comment but it is definitely a must-read.
  • Excellent post indeed! I'm learning that the key for my business is doing an effective job of communicating the vision. As a leader and the one owning the vision you need input from your team but at the end of the day if everyone doesn't share the big picture and real communication isn't taking place then projects and organizations will stumble.
  • Great post + thanks for sharing! Indeed vision creation & execution must work side by side! I really enjoyed your blog...
  • First off: vision is a process.

    In this analogy I have had similar experience while involved in art and dance in Chicago. I was a often a director and choreographer (the visionary).

    One thing any successful visionary has to admit is that their vision is improvisational. It is often inspired and adapted along the way as the group executes. No vision is stagnant.

    Thus the visionary relies on the group to help that vision unfold. It is a symbiotic relationship which can fall apart if not acknowledged. My point is that all levels need to know that their position is part and parcel to the vision.
  • Right on with this one Chris. Running my own company I've had all these roles. It's a lot easier to focus on the role you're the most excellent at and find some awesome people to play with to fill the other roles. This isn't always easy.

    @Amber - I love what you said about visionary translators. Being able to translate vision and fully enroll co-creators is a real art and an excellent path to success. Being flexible and generous with the vision sure helps.
  • its needs us to be in different spectrum s. we need to play more than one role.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous post: Podcasting Isn’t Exactly Dead

Next post: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior