Often my executive clients go straight into Action mode by asking ‘How …?’ questions without sufficient reflection on defining their inspirational Vision, and this is problematic. 

To explain, ‘How …?’ questions operate in a different part of the brain, where all too often barriers emerge, and clients get ‘stuck’. To get unstuck, they first need to be crystal clear on where they’re going (i.e. Vision).

Vision activates the Pre-Frontal Cortex (the Executive Brain … the Control Tower) – and this is where the world of possibility exists (eg. let’s colonise Mars, with Elon Musk). And between Vision and Action lies a key step, Strategy. 

To bring all of this alive, think of a BOOK METAPHOR – what will make your book stand out from the rest is an inspirational, visionary Title. You open the book to see the Chapter Headings (the Strategies). You go to a Chapter and start reading the contents (the Action).

As the image below shows, leaders with the most impact are those who can seamlessly move themselves AND their teams across all 3 dimensions – their … Vision-Strategy-Action.

As Nelson Mandela famously observed “Action without vision is merely day dreaming, but vision with action can change the world.

A big thank you to the NeuroLeadership Instiute who developed this book metaphor, and who explain that ‘Why …?’ and ‘How …?’ are two different ways of thinking (i.e. you cannot think about your vsion and be actioning it at the same time).