(p.76) "It's become conventional wisdom that in order to get people excited about the present, you talk about the future, you have a vision statement. Problem is, most vision statements are way too incomplete at best, and cynic-inducing claptrap at worst."

"Agreed," I agreed.

He chucked the stick again. "It's easy to pump people up. But it's usually a temporary phenomenon. Michael Cunningham, the novelist, said, 'If you shout loud enough, for long enough, a crowd will gather to see what all the noise is about. It's the nature of crowds. They don't stay long, unless you give them reason.'"

"Well said," I said.

"Leaders ostensibly use vision statements to give people reason, right?" Once more, he chucked the stick.

"And you're saying they don't?" I asked, feigning shock.

"Not hardly." He waited for Sadie to return, and when she did, he told her to sit and then scratched her aggressively behind the ears.

"First of all, every business book you pick up will tell you that you need to have a vision statement, so any company that's done its required reading will have one. It develops like this: A group of senior executives--now known as the 'executive team'--goes away on an off-site, sits down together, and has a poetry contest. They try to hammer out just the right words and phrases, and they argue for hours--days, sometimes--over the choice of words. 'Should we call them customers or clients, are they shareholders or stakeholders, do we have employees or are they associates?' They tear their hair out, and they threaten, and they fight, and ultimately--at the end of the day--they have created a magnificent document, and they're so, so proud. So what do they do?"

"Get drunk?"

"They laminate it. Laminate it on little wallet-sized cards and hand out a copy to everybody in the organization. Then they hang a full-colored calligraphy version in the reception area and wait for something to happen. After a time, they look around the company and are absolutely incredulous that nothing has changed! 'What the hell is wrong with these people?' they exclaim. 'Can't they read?'

"It's as if they expect the laminated card to work like a nicotine patch. Carry it close to your skin and the energy will somehow get into your bloodstream. It doesn't happen that way. Most corporate vision statements are generic and meaningless to the very people they are supposed to inspire. And they don't--to say the least--generate energy of any kind.

"They may as well say, 'Blah, blah, blah, blah, company. Blah, blah, blah, blah, customers. Blah, blah, blah, blah, shareholders. Blah, blah, blah, blah, employees.'" He threw the stick, and there went Sadie.

"It's simply a case of mistaken cause and effect," Edg continued. "A vision statement doesn't generate energy, love does, great ideas do, principles and values do. A vision statement that comes from a workshop exercise is usually about as energizing and memorable as a saltine cracker."

I'd witnessed that scenario over and over. One senior team of executives at a bank I had worked with did The Vision Off-site and came away with their very own snappy acronym: STAR. I can't remember what it stood for; I think it was Service, Teamwork, Accountability, and Respect. Or maybe it was Synergy, Tenacity, Ability, and Returns. What I do remember is that their frontline folks kept telling me they were confused about the organization's vision.

So, I went back to the executive team and I said, "Listen, I've got some feedback for you. Your employees are telling me they don't understand the vision of the company." That infuriated one of the senior executives, whose face turned so red that I thought his head was going to pop right off.

"What do you mean they don't understand the vision?" he had howled. "We did that! It's STAR!"

"Well," I had said gently, "the very fact that you are saying 'we did that' means that you are not doing that. Maybe your folks need a little more than an acronym."

"Like what?" he had demanded.

"How about an anagram?" I had suggested. He hadn't appreciated my wry humor as much as I had, even though "RATS" was, I had pointed out, a great anagram for STAR.

"But vision from the heart is--by definition--an expression of love," Edg was saying. "And not only is that more energizing, it is energy. It's juice, man." He looked out over the ocean as Sadie bolted, once again, into the surf.

"Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech was juice for a generation. He didn't have to hand out 250,000 laminated cards at the Lincoln Memorial on that hot August day in 1963. Watch the tape: it was pure energy. Juice. Life itself." He called Sadie, and we turned around and headed back towards the lifeguard station.

He looked down at the sand as we walked. "Think about your clients, Steve. I'll bet the vast majority of them grossly underestimate the power of their own hearts. They have NO FREAKIN' IDEA how much energy they can unleash in themselves and those around them if they just put down that bureaucratic, banal, generic crapola and tell people why they love their businesses and communicate their authentic hopes and aspirations for the future of their companies. Am I right?"

I flashed back to the scene in Janice's office. "I suspect so," I said. "So what's the remedy for the 'blah, blah, blah' corporate vision statements?"

"Burn the damned things," said Edg. (p.80)