Step 2 Develop a patient safety vision

Whereas strategy is the plan by which leaders intend to accomplish the organization s final objectives, vision contains their ideas about what the organization will look like when the strategic objectives are successfully achieved. Vision is thus a concrete picture of the desired future state. If a company s product strategy involves superior customer satisfaction, the leadership s vision statement may include gathering customer information faster than any competitor in the industry to adapt the product to specific customer wants and needs. 

Between Collins s 30-year time frame and the potential exoneration inherent in no time frame, we find it useful to ask the leadership team to look five to 10 years ahead and then back to today as a way of creating a roadmap to the desired future. If you are planning a trip, you need to know where you re headed. This enables you to set direction, specify meaningful milestones, and formulate criteria that let you know when you have arrived. If several people are involved in planning the trip, the first thing they need to do is agree on the destination. 

12 Jim Collins, Good to Great Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don t (New York HarperBusiness, 2001). Viewed at www.jimcollins.com. 

As Collins explains, the two components of core ideology and envisioned future induce a creative and dynamic tension between preservation and change. This tension answers the why of a vision statement by acknowledging the difficulty of holding constant the core values while laying out the roadmap to the new destination. 

A clear patient safety vision helps leaders  

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Step I Gain leadership alignment on patient safety as a strategic priority. Step 2 Develop a patient safety vision. 

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