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Often overlooked, a good vision is an octane boost for your project.

A good vision:

• is a short and concise statement or illustration
• has soul and is from the heart
• inspires; makes an impression
• starts with one person
• can be explained in less than a minute
• is a stretch, but feasible
• can help eliminate all the distractions that do not get you to your end goal quickly
• is embraced

A bad vision:

• is a meaningless sentence comprised of cliches and buzz words
• is forgotten two hours later
• leaves people more confused after hearing it
• is written in a 2 hour meeting with 10 colleagues
• doesn’t align people
• is a project plan used in lieu of a vision
• is used in water cooler jokes

The time to create a good vision (at LEAST a few days of individual thought, followed by some fine-tuning with stakeholders) is well worth the investment.

A few books to help: Leading Change by John P. Kotter and The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner.