Vision isn’t enough. Communicating it is everything.

“If you tell me about the vision thing one more time, I’m outta here.”

We looked at each other with a shared smirk, but I knew that I had to handle this next part of our session carefully. Coaching startup founders is like that: if you never challenge their thinking, nothing changes; push too hard and they check out. For this CEO and his company, what we were discussing could (and eventually would) save months of time and several million dollars in capital. This one needed to be handled just right.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“When we talk about how the team is starting to churn, you always remind me that they aren’t clear on the vision,” he said.

“Or focusing on it,” I added. He nodded and laughed.

“Yeah. Or focusing on it,” he agreed. “Every time you bring it up, I tell you that the vision couldn’t be any clearer or more obvious. It’s on the wall in words and in pictures. It’s in every press release. I even gave a TED talk about it. It’s hard to avoid the vision, but you keep mentioning it. What am I missing?”

The CEO was right: the company had done a good job of painting a picture of the future, and it was an exciting one. When this works, it will transform a fundamental part of millions of people’s lives. The thing they are building has high visibility, and the company has done a terrific job of projecting their ambition and confidence. But there was something crucial missing, and I knew the CEO wasn’t going to like it. I also knew that he could level up his leadership if he made one change.

Vision gets a bad rap. It’s one of those things we talk about without ever really pausing to say what we mean. You’ll struggle to find someone who thinks vision isn’t important, but most startups treat vision as somewhat ephemeral and occasionally a distraction from their daily work. As we go about our work with the mistaken belief that we’re all aligned on the intended outcome (this is called “groupthink”, by the way), our teams fight about the “how” while losing sight of the “what” and “why”. We think everyone has the vision locked in, and we’re often very wrong about that.

My friend Eric Marcoullier has written that the CEO has three responsibilities:

• Communicate the Vision.

• Hire Great People.

• Don’t Run Out of Money.

He goes on to put a very fine point on why the last two depend almost entirely on the first:

Everything comes from communicating the vision. Simply put, it is the foundation upon which startups stand or fall.

Vision is a tangible description of what will be different in the world when you execute successfully on your idea. Most people assume this means grandiose, fluffy statements like, “To become the global standard for…” or “We are creating a world in which everyone is happy…” or some such nonsense. Vision is much easier than that:

• If your company no longer exists, what’s worse in the world, and who misses it?

• Because your company exists, what’s better, and who cares?

Answer those two questions and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how to describe your vision. But that’s just the start.

For the CEO who didn’t want to hear about “the vision thing” anymore, articulating the vision wasn’t the problem. Communicating it was.

It’s not hard for his teams to know what they’re building or why. To his point, it’s in their faces every day. The problem is that it’s human nature to lose sight of things that are important but far off in favor of things that are urgent and immediate. For this company, it meant that teams weren’t cooperating with each other, roles were increasingly vague, and all debates were overwhelmed by “how” with no discussion of “why” or “what”.

Did these teams know what the vision is? Yes, without a doubt (I checked). Were they mindful of their work in the context of the vision? Not at all.

Here’s the part leaders in a startup don’t like: the first job of the CEO isn’t just to have a vision—it’s to communicate it. Repeatedly.

This CEO was making the same error many startup leaders make. No one likes to say the same thing over and over. We’re smart people, we hire smart people, we assume that everyone knows why we’re here. But we’re wrong.

If you’re driving from New York to Los Angeles, you’re going to be focusing on a lot of things each day—gas, speed, weather, etc.—but probably not much on LA. That’s how we process long trips: progress each day, decisions and obstacles, keeping gas in the tank. Just like in a startup.

Do that enough and the road wears you down. Every hour and every mile feels repetitive. The food choices are limited and mostly unhealthy. People get on each other’s nerves and bicker about routes and turns at the wheel. Just like in a startup.

This is where communicating the vision becomes vitally important:

Words create reality.

Sure, everybody in the car knows you’re headed to LA. They can probably tell you a lot about what LA is like and what it’ll be like to be there. But this mile and this hour are here now. LA is days away.

As a CEO, this is why you tell the story. Then tell it again. And again.

People need these reminders, but not because they don’t know. They need to be reminded because today is closer and more real. You tell them the story over and over and over because people need something to look forward to, and they need to be reminded of it when times are hard, when days are long, when they lose their way. You tell them the story to keep them in the car and moving forward.

On this particular day, I knew it wouldn’t help to push on the vision. So I changed the subject. I asked about his relationship.

“You’ve been together for around a year, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I little more than that,” he agreed.

“That’s great,” I said. “Have you told her you love her?”

He flashed a big grin. “Yeah.”

“When did you see her last?”

“This morning. Why?”

“When you left this morning, did you tell her you love her?”

“Yes…”

“Why did you need to tell her today? Haven’t you already told her?”

He laughed out loud and then called me a couple of choice epithets.

He talked a lot about the vision after that.

Each week I post something simple and immediate for founders, CEOs, and teams in growing companies. If you like what you’re reading here, I’d love to share it with you. Just fill in your details below or go here to get a new tip delivered to you each week.