Vision is the ability to see and can be defined as a picture of the future. Vision can be captured in words, visuals or both. It needs to balance being aspirational versus inspirational, and being tangible versus practical.

Whether it’s an individual or an organisation’s vision, it is always realised by collective actions. When conceptualising a vision there are some key criteria to be considered; Is it specific? Can it be measured? Is it achievable? Is it realistic? What is the timeframe?. Though these questions are not easy to answer, they will determine and guide the plan of action for achieving a vision.

A vision is where a person or an organisation wants to be in the future, but in order to determine a journey an assessment is required of the current position using various methods. The assessment will identify some key enablers or barriers on the journey which should then be thoroughly analysed to create a plan of action, including key activities and the associated risk — that is the possibility that things may not go according to plan and the likely impact. These activities and risks must be further monitored periodically to track the journey and adjust the path required to stay on course.

Everyone can participate in a vision to make it real. The finance function is no different.

Finance teams should consider doing some ‘from-to’ analysis of the key shifts that might be needed to attain the vision. It might be helpful to imagine where you are as a function compared with where you wish to end up, and break this down into a number of ‘from-to’ scenarios.

With the latest IT systems, the modern finance function should be able to step back from more routine transaction reporting and become far more involved in challenging the business fundamentals, especially in challenging resource allocation. Reporting, although a core role, has limited value, as the past can’t be changed but the future can be. Equally, ‘controlling’ is a limited role, while ‘guiding’ (for example, through education and coaching) and ‘facilitation’ can actually create new economic value, and prevent value destruction.

As a finance professional, it is my philosophy that “financial results are the finished products of people’s actions”. What actions are now required for future results? What actions are required to create economic value? We cannot change the past, but we can change our actions today to determine the future.

The finance function is perhaps the most routine of all departments in organisations, and a lot of time that might be spent on higher-value activities getting pushed back because of this. But routines ought to be questioned — are they really needed and, if so, how can they be done in the least possible time and with fewest resources?

In creating a vision, it might be that finance moves from a tactical role — where the majority of activity is spent on number-crunching and reporting — to a strategic role where that activity is reduced (you should get worried if it is over 50 per cent). This will help give the finance function a sense of being properly involved in the decision-making.

One useful way of deploying this is to characterise some of the more extreme ‘froms’ and ‘tos’ and to score these – from, say, 1 to 5 or 1 to 10. You score where you are now and then target where you wish to be in the future (for example, to move from a 4 to an 8). The difference becomes the ‘strategic gap’ that you then need to address with change strategies.

Though most organizations have a vision, it is often seen that most individual departments do not have a vision. As a leader of a team, it is the small vision that manifests into the overall vision of an organisation.

If you are a leader and do not have a vision for yourself or team; stop, think and create one very soon. To develop a strategy for the finance function, you need to evaluate your current position and consider where you might take it (which your tentative ‘vision’ above has done for you).

The gap between the two —between the present position and the future — is the strategic gap. You can then assess the possibilities for configuring finance as a mini business and generate the strategic options. These include being able to:

• Seek new value-creating activities;

• Assess shifts in existing value-creating activities

• Consider what value-diluting activities you could stop doing;

• Simplifying activities;

• Looking at ‘insourcing’ versus outsourcing;

• Review structure, skills and systems choices.

Once you have a list of options to consider, the next steps might be the following: look at how interdependent these are; draw up a matrix of the strategic options you have shortlisted against the criteria on the strategic option grid — using, for example, strategic attractiveness, financial attractiveness, implementation difficulty, uncertainty and risk, and stakeholder acceptability; then rate each of these. This will help you be able to see what your organisation needs do to make each option better. Then stress-test them, for example, by asking what the one big thing is that you might have forgotten.

A vision — or a dream as most people would say — is not easy. However focus, determination, dedication, motivation, support, and the list could go on and on, these are always required.

Rotary, known for ‘Service above self’ is an international service organisation of which I am a member locally. Rotary had a vision from the 1980s to eradicate polio by launching an ‘End Polio now’ campaign. This saw Rotary, along with other partners, working together to fight the disease, and the campaign resulted in a 99.9 per cent reduction in polio cases from approximately 1,000 cases per day in 125 countries to 37 polio cases reported for 2016 in only three remaining countries worldwide.

This is an example of an accomplished vision that was known to all the key stakeholders, and which continues to monitor initiatives to achieve 100 per cent success with a new campaign called ‘We are this close’. What this means is that while the vision itself has not changed, the journey needs continuous monitoring and initiatives to achieve the desired outcome.

I can personally testify to a vision achieved! I knew from high school that I wanted to become a chartered accountant. I wrote this vision on a piece of paper and although the journey was challenging, it took a great deal of dedication and determination to achieve my personal vision by the age of 23 years, after having completed ACCA and receiving the required experience simultaneously.

As time goes on the vision will continually evolve as you get closer to achieving it, and the closer you get the clearer it will become. For team leaders, share your vision with others. Ultimately, having a vision will give your organisation a clear focus and can keep you on track with a goal to which everyone should rightly aspire.

Atasha Bernard is financial controller, LASCO Financial Services Limited.