Contagious Vision

Ask ten people in your company where you're going. If you get ten different answers, or ten polite shrugs, you don't have a strategy problem. You have a vision problem.

Most companies are flying without a vision. Usually the leader has one. It just never made it out of the leader's head. It lives in a slide deck, a retreat binder, or a sentence on the wall that nobody can repeat. Meanwhile your best people quietly check out, because they can no longer see where the company is going or why it's worth getting there.

In Contagious Vision, serial entrepreneur, executive coach, and pilot Chris Behnke gives founders, executives, and leaders a simple model for fixing that: Vision, Seat, Carry.

Vision. Build one clear, worthy sentence your newest hire could repeat at the coffee machine, and run it through the Worthy Test before you ask anyone to follow it.

Seat. Give every person a place in the story, so they can see where they fit and why their work matters.

Carry. Keep the vision alive through the long middle, with the repetition, stories, and honest communication that turn it into something your team carries without you.

Drawn from more than two decades of building and leading companies, this is a field guide for leaders who are done casting visions nobody remembers. Inside you'll find the Coffee Machine Test, the Worthy Test, the Honest CEO Letter, and free tools to put each chapter to work with your team.

Your people are waiting for something worth carrying. Give it to them.