By Axel Oreste, Founder of HackCell
Most leaders have a vision. The problem is that it too often stays in their heads.
They spend hours thinking about the company’s direction, refining the strategy, and imagining what it could become in three years. Then they gather the team, present the plan, and leave convinced that everyone is on board. Two weeks later, behaviours have not changed.
This is not a vision problem. It is a transmission problem.
Having a Vision Is Not Enough — You Have to Make It Contagious
When we began working with Groupe Endurance Immobilier, the organization had about thirty brokers. They were competent, independent professionals who performed well individually. But in an environment where a “everyone for themselves” culture is almost the norm, management wanted to build something different: a team that works collectively, not a group of solo performers.
The challenge was not to convince the brokers that the vision was good. It was to make them feel that it mattered to them — concretely, in their day-to-day work and in their results.
What we put in place was not revolutionary: structured conversation spaces, rituals that explicitly connected individual actions to the collective objective, and work on the way leaders carried the message — not with the language of the strategic plan, but with language rooted in the field.
The results became visible without needing to measure them: more accountability, fewer conflicts, and more targeted recruitment. Some brokers who did not fit the culture left on their own — without friction or confrontation. Managers stopped chasing people. The organization gained traction, speed, and clarity. And the atmosphere, which people often hesitate to name in a strategic plan, became a real competitive advantage.
The vision itself had not changed. What changed was the way it lived inside the organization.
From Executive Speech to Team Language
At this point, some leaders will raise their hand and say, “My problem isn’t culture — it’s that my employees lack skills.” I hear them. But in most cases I have observed, the perceived lack of skills is actually a lack of engagement. People do not give their full potential when they do not understand why it matters. This is not a training issue — it is a meaning issue. And meaning is built; it is not distributed in an email.
A vision mobilizes people when it meets three fundamental needs: understanding where we are going, feeling why it matters to me, and believing that I have a real role to play. Most internal communications succeed at the first point. They fail at the other two.
We are very good at explaining the “what” — the objectives, the numbers, the milestones. But we forget the emotional bridge. And without that bridge, the vision remains just another slide.
This means translating your vision into the language of the field. Not the language of shareholders. The language of the person who starts their day at 8 a.m. and wonders, consciously or not: does what I am doing today really matter?
Vision does not cascade — it is cultivated.
Buy-In Must Be Earned, Not Declared
There is a common confusion between informing and mobilizing.. Informing means transmitting a message. Mobilizing means creating the conditions for people to choose to engage.
When a team takes ownership of a vision — when they can explain it in their own words, when they see its direct connection to their work that day — you no longer need to motivate them. They motivate themselves.
It is not magic. It is structure, repetition, and consistency. When applied with rigour, these three ingredients transform a leader’s vision into an organizational culture.
Axel Oreste will be present for SME leaders at the Stratégies PME event next November. To learn more : hackcell.co
