The Remove-the-Logo Test: Why Cliché Visions and Visions That Forget the Customer Move No One
If you took the logo off your vision statement and put it on a competitor's, would it still make sense? Why cliché visions and visions that forget the customer move no one.
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A vision is never just a sentence. It carries a company's dream of the future, its stance, and its power to change. For years I have been collecting the vision statements of companies across industries, studying them and archiving them as notes. While preparing this piece I realized that these accumulated sentences tell the story not only of companies but of an era.
Studying them, I noticed an interesting pattern. Most truly compelling visions aim to transform a human experience rather than define an industry. The strongest visions focus less on “what we do” and more on “what changes in people's lives.” A bank doesn't promise financial services; it promises the feeling of financial freedom. A food company doesn't just make products; it takes on the responsibility of feeding the planet.
That small difference has a large effect, because people attach themselves less to what a company sells than to what it believes.
So why are weak visions weak? Creating an organization's vision and making it real looks simple on paper, but in practice it is a hard test of leadership. The mistakes made while setting that direction can disappoint even the best-intentioned leaders. In this piece and the next two I look at the mistakes most often made: why they are made, what they lead to, and how to prevent them. As you read, you will probably recognize situations from your own experience and think, “so it's not just me.” Almost every leader chasing a big vision runs into similar uncertainty and resistance. What matters is the lesson we take from it.
This piece covers two mistakes in the vision statement itself: being a cliché, and forgetting the customer.
The cliché, vague vision
Is your vision a sentence that pleases everyone but actually says nothing? If so, you are not alone. Many leaders treat creating a vision as a to-do item and get through this critical work with a few hours of wordplay. The result is language general enough to fit any company. “To lead our industry in customer satisfaction and be the best employer” sounds nice, but any of your competitors could use the exact same sentence.
This vagueness leaves people asking, “So what exactly are we trying to do?” Instead of strengthening the sense of direction, it creates confusion.
Why it happens. Making a vision clear takes effort and carries risk; speaking vaguely feels more comfortable than committing to something concrete. Some leaders mistake the vision for a marketing slogan and reach for round phrases that please everyone. Underneath there is also the fear of being wrong. Staying vague instead of setting a measurable vision can look like a way out of accountability.
What it leads to. A cliché vision doesn't inspire. People struggle to embrace it because there is no concrete goal to excite them or give meaning to their daily work. Everyone interprets the vision their own way, strategic decisions grow inconsistent, and the organization never aligns. Customers and partners outside can't see what you are working toward either, and what sets you apart from competitors stays blurry.
How to prevent it. Stay true to your own identity when you build the vision. What truly makes your company unique? Your vision should carry clues that belong only to you. One test is enough for the cliché trap:
If I took the logo off this sentence and put it on another company, would it still make sense? If the answer is yes, your vision isn't original enough.
Make sure your vision has concrete edges too. Even though a vision draws a broad direction, people eventually want to see a concrete frame for success. Instead of “to offer the most innovative products,” something like “to make a measurable improvement in our customers' lives every year through innovative products” is both ambitious and trackable. That way the vision stops being an abstract ideal and becomes a guiding star.
Forgetting the customer and the market
Does your vision talk only about internal goals? Something like “to be the leading company developing the most innovative technologies,” pleasant but without the customer's point of view? Leaving the customer out is a critical mistake. While a vision sets a direction for the company, it should also describe what value the customer will get from you in the future. A customer-focused vision inspires people outside and the team inside far more strongly.
Why it happens. When we write a vision, we naturally focus on our own goals: what we want to become, where we want to get to. That's perfectly human. But stepping into the customer's shoes gets forgotten. Inside-out blindness pulls us into our own products and processes and pushes the customer's real problem into second place. Some leaders also worry that a customer-focused vision will sound like a cliché, and prefer to leave the customer experience to the mission or the values instead.
What it leads to. A vision that leaves out the customer feeds a culture that puts customer experience second. While people think about the big picture, they start losing sight of how their work affects the end user. From the outside, your vision says nothing to potential customers, who want to hear what you will make better for them. And while you are busy with an inward-looking vision, you fall behind shifts in customer preference and moves by competitors.
How to prevent it. Read your vision statement for a moment as an outsider would: “Is there a picture of the future here that touches the customer?” If not, rewrite it. Instead of “to be number one in the market,” something like “to be known for pioneering solutions that make our customers' lives easier” holds both your ambition and the benefit to the customer.
When building the vision, discuss these questions with your team:
- What problem will we solve for the customer, what need will we meet?
- When our vision comes true, what improvement will customers see in their lives?
- How will our product or service change the customer's day-to-day experience in the future?
A vision shaped by these questions focuses people inside on the customer's success and becomes a strong message outside. It is no accident that Amazon has described itself for years as a company that seeks to be “Earth's most customer-centric company”; that sentence reminds every employee to put the customer at the center of the work as a principle.
Bring your customer into your vision too, so that it becomes a real value promise. In the next piece we look at the scale of a vision: how big, how concrete, and where it should part ways with the mission.