Buried within all good Vision or Purpose statements (we will just call them Vision statements in this article) lies the potential to inspire, create and explore. Your Vision statement is more than a catch phrase: it's a call to arms and one of the most powerful innovation tools available. But you need to know how to use it. 

A good Vision statement helps you understand and articulate the difference you wish to create as an organization. This in turn should inform all decisions and service development.

Vision statements that focus on impact and purpose have the power to motivate and align Board members and employees and present a clear picture to stakeholders about what your organization stands for and hopes to achieve.

What’s more, meaningful Vision statements give employees a reason to care about your organization’s customers, their peers, and about how they conduct themselves in a volatile business environment.

A good Vision statement also helps Board members and executives focus on what brings them together as an organization, why they conduct meetings, why they hire staff in the first place.

The real question is: how well do we map our existing business, services and programs against the key elements of our Vision statement, and how well do we “walk the talk”.

This discussion, at both Board and staff level, should focus on the strategic issues that are raised, and the awareness that is required to drive the organization towards creating the future and the possibilities that the Vision articulates.

Here are 11 key strategies that unlock business and service innovation from your Vision statement:

1. Have the Vision statement on each Board agenda to remind the Board why they are meeting.

2. Encourage the Chairman and other Directors to use the Vision statement to assist in gaining clarity around a discussion or decision, and to create greater strategic awareness around the issue.

3. Embed discussion of the Vision statement into the Board induction program with new directors, and how the organization uses the Vision statement.

4. Use the Vision statement as the first point of discussion and filter at your strategic planning session. 

5. Ensure that all strategies and actions from the strategic plan directly align with the Vision statement.

6. Evaluate how the Board understands and uses the Vision statement as part of your Board evaluation process.

7. Evaluate how key stakeholders perceive the Board understands and uses the Vision statement as part of your Board evaluation process.

8. Embed the key elements of the Vision statement into the performance management framework of staff, especially senior leadership.

9. Ensure that all new projects specifically address the key elements of the Vision statement.

10. Annually map your existing programs, products or services against the key elements in your Vision statement, and realign so they all meet the key elements of the Vision.

11. Revisit the Vision statement annually as part of your annual strategic plan review, and ask the questions: “Does this still represent the essence of what we want to create?” “Has anything changed that will necessitate a change in our Vision statement?”

If you are able to show that all the above are in place, then you are truly a vision-driven organization, strategically aware, a social innovator, an organization that makes a difference in all it does, and an organization that is creating a better place for the stakeholders who have placed their trust in you.

Are you willing to be the social innovator that your Vision statement invites you to be? Are you willing to strategically lead your nonprofit organization towards the creation of that possible future?