How this book will deliver reader value

This book is aimed at leaders and senior managers of every type of organization, from global companies to schools, police forces to small businesses, and will enable them to do two things very well:

• Establish a strong set of vision and values

• Make them work in practice at all levels

The first is less important, yet absorbs most of their time on this task. Typical practice is to spend months crafting a set of vision and values statements, communicating them through seminars, meetings, posters, booklets, intranet and plastic cards, before breathing a sigh of relief and getting 'back to work'.

Based on anecdotal evidence, there is a mismatch between relative importance and time allocation, as shown in Table 1.1:

Results, unsurprisingly, are often depressing. This book therefore focuses on implementation, outlining seven Best Practices for making vision and values work, and taking a hard-edged approach to a soft topic. Creation of vision statements is included because exciting visions work better.

Companies and non-profits are given equal attention, since each has much to learn from the other. Non-profits often have superior skills in developing vision and values, living them and branding them. Companies are usually better at building systems to embed and...