Andrew M. Carton
June 12, 2015
When leaders communicate a vision of their organization s future, they tend to
emphasize ideals and ideology the importance of success, stewardship, or
sustainability. Leaders are likely to emphasize this type of abstract
rhetoric more as businesses become increasingly digital. Given that employees
within the same organization increasingly possess distinct types of technical
knowledge, it may appear that an abstract, general vision is appropriate in
order to gain traction and prevent alienating different constituencies.
Yet this type of rhetoric undermines another core objective of vision
communication: providing clarity about the future. Leaders must communicate
strategies for growth that employees can clearly envision. Instead of invoking
abstract ideals, the most effective leaders communicate their visions using
image-based words.
What, exactly, is a vision with image-based words? It s one that describes
people with well-defined attributes (such as children) and observable actions
(such as smiling and laughing). Image-based words convey sensory information to
paint a vivid picture of the future, one that employees can easily imagine
witnessing. Along these lines, visions with image-based words are more
consistent with the literal meaning of the word vision. When leaders include
vivid images in their communications, they re transporting employees to the
future by telling snippets of a compelling story a story that captures events
that have yet to unfold.
Visions with image-based words enhance performance significantly more than
visions with abstract statements. Along with Chad Murphy of Oregon State
University and Jonathan Clark of Penn State University, I found that hospital
leaders who communicated visions with image-based words triggered better
patient outcomes than leaders who communicated visions abstractly.
Moreover, in a second study in which teams were tasked with developing a toy
prototype, we determined that a vision communicated via image-laden words ( our
toys will make wide-eyed kids laugh and proud parents smile ) triggered
stronger performance than a vision with similar content but without visual
wording ( our toys will be enjoyed by all of our customers ). We found that
image-based words have a galvanizing influence they inspire people to work
together toward the same crystal-clear snapshot of the future.
Other research has demonstrated the benefits of image-based words. For
instance, Purdue University s Cynthia Emrich and her colleagues found that U.S.
presidents who used image-based words in their speeches were considered to be
more charismatic than those who didn t.
You ve heard image-based phrases: Some of the most inspirational speeches
during some of the most critical junctures in history are united by their usage
of imagery, from Winston Churchill s snapshot of a future in which the Allied
forces would fight in the fields and in the streets to John F. Kennedy s
vision of landing a man on the moon to Martin Luther King Jr. s dream in
which the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be
able to sit down together.
Image-based words have also been used to spark revolutionary moments in
business: think of Bill Gates s vision of a world with a computer on every
desk and in every home and Henry Ford s dream of a car large enough for the
family to enjoy the blessing of hours of pleasure in God s great open spaces.
In more recent times, a British chemical engineer named Paul Thomas
pronounced a vision that one day we will be able to detect a previously
undetectable tumour metabolising inside a human lung simply by asking a patient
to breathe into a device.
As Chip and Dan Heath argue in their book Made to Stick, people find concrete
messages intuitive because life is concrete. Life involves sights, sounds, and
smells, and image-based words provide the best way to approximate this reality
through language. My colleagues and I argue that the usefulness of words that
mimic reality is especially pronounced when people are thinking about the
long-term future because the future is typically so uncertain. Since the future
hasn t happened yet, people respond favorably when they hear it described not
in terms of abstract aspirations such as maximizing shareholder value or
promoting superior customer service, but in terms of what it will look, feel,
and sound like.
But people aren t well-equipped to craft vivid messages about the future. Nira
Liberman of Tel Aviv University and Yaacov Trope of NYU have found that as we
mentally project into the future, we tend to think more abstractly. For
example, when people are asked to imagine the action of reading a book, they
are more likely to describe it as gaining knowledge than following lines of
print if they are asked to imagine doing it next year rather than tomorrow.
Due to this tendency, my co-authors and I have found that more than 90% of
leaders communicate visions without any image-based words.
When people are encouraged to counter this tendency by communicating more
concretely about the distant future, they often set a specific numeric
performance target, such as an increase in stock price, market share, or ROI.
Of course, this type of quantification is essential for business success. We
use data to convert complex phenomena into a more manageable form, compressing
the messiness of reality into that which is measurable. We quantify reality in
order to track progress. And research on goal setting has established the
merits of specific numeric targets for increasing motivation, in large part
because they increase clarity about expectations. The importance of
quantification has only grown in the digital era.
.
Yet image-based words are likely to provide benefits that numeric targets
cannot. In other research settings, rhetoric with image-based words has been
shown to be superior to rhetoric with numbers in two key ways. Messages laced
with data and statistics cannot be easily understood in the absence of stories
(which typically have image-based words). And messages with vivid details are
also more emotionally riveting than messages with statistics. For instance,
Deborah A. Small of Wharton and her colleagues found that a story about a
starving 7-year-old girl from Mali prompted people to donate more than twice as
much money as a message that food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than
three million children in Zambia.
These two principles are likely to translate to vision communication. First,
consider comprehensibility. A company s goal of increasing renewable energy
usage by 25% requires that people understand the nuances of different forms of
renewable energy and how to take stock of current usage. But a vision to create
a city with solar panels on every rooftop, biofuel in every car, and wind
turbines on every hill is instantly understandable for all recipients
regardless of their background or technical expertise.
To illustrate the second principle (emotional impact), consider VisionZero, New
York City s goal of reducing annual pedestrian fatalities from 200 to 0. The
specificity of this target certainly renders it an effective benchmark. But an
image-based vision could capture how life would be different if this goal were
achieved, perhaps by referring to how 200 more people a year would have many
years left to watch sunsets with their loved ones and laugh with their friends.
Numeric targets pose another problem. Since numbers are more specific than
general notions such as maximizing shareholder value, it may be tempting to
believe that they would bring to mind other forms of specific thinking, such as
mental imagery. Yet contemplating numeric targets is likely to undermine the
ability to conjure mental images. To understand why, briefly consider the
anatomy of the brain. As explained by Seymour Epstein and his colleagues, we
have two cognitive systems one that thinks logically (the analytical system,
or our rational self ) and another that encodes sensory information about the
external environment (the experiential system, or our mind s eye ). Numbers
are processed in the analytical system. They do not trigger the formation of
mental images. Alternatively, image-based words are processed in the
experiential system. When we read or hear image-based words, they are instantly
converted to verbal portraits in our mind s eye.
It is difficult to engage both brain systems at once. When one system is
primed, the other tends to lie dormant. Since quantitative information (data,
statistics, metrics, and numeric targets) triggers the analytical system, the
part of the mind capable of generating a vibrant snapshot of the future shuts
off. Quantification is the imagination s mortal enemy.
To convey an inspiring and memorable portrayal of an ideal world not yet
realized, leaders should not communicate exclusively with abstract language and
numeric targets. They should harness the power of image-based words.
Andrew M. Carton is an assistant professor of management at The Wharton School
of the University of Pennsylvania.