Guiding Growth: How Vision Keeps Companies on Course

by Mark Lipton

When it comes to sustained success, vision matters more than strategy. Scores of studies have proven this statement, and millions of business leaders believe it. Yet few executives understand what vision is. They embrace the idea, but ignore the implementation - a disconnect that threatens companies striving for growth in a volatile marketplace. Organizational expert Mark Lipton argues that this "believing-doing" gap exists because today's fast-paced world demands short-term fixes-pressuring executives to make tactical decisions that ultimately create larger strategic problems down the road. But Lipton shows that vision has more substance than leaders think-and that it is an essential factor in building scalable organizations that last for the long haul.Based on extensive research and real-world consulting work with executives implementing the scaling process, "Guiding Growth" provides fresh examples of established and new firms that have developed powerful growth visions. Moving beyond token 'mission statements', Lipton outlines a step-by-step process for establishing an actionable vision, presenting it to the company, and embedding it into the organizational fabric. Illustrating how visions become guiding forces for day-to-day behaviour and overall company direction, "Guiding Growth" reveals how companies can stay their course, even as they grow.Mark Lipton is Founder of the consulting firm Lipton & Co., which specializes in organizational growth. He is Professor of Management and Chair, Human Resources Management and Organizational Change Management at the Milano Graduate School, New School University, in New York City.

Genres: Management

288 pages, Hardcover

First published December 10, 2002

About the author

Mark Lipton is graduate professor of management at The New School in New York City. For over forty years, he has been a trusted adviser to Fortune 500 corporations, think tanks, philanthropies, not-for-profits, and start-ups.

His diverse entrepreneurial client base includes founders of transformative start-ups in technology, manufacturing, media, education, health care, finance, and marketing. His coaching skills and leadership development programs are engaged by C-level executives across all sectors of the economy, and his development of corporate and nonprofit boards allows them to govern more effectively. In the not-for-profit realm, he has consulted to and led leadership development initiatives for organizations ranging from multibillion-dollar philanthropic game-changers to local community-based social service providers to the world’s largest international NGOs. Much of his work to infuse progressive leadership practices into the NGO and not-for-profit world has been made possible by significant grants from the Ford, Rockefeller, Mott, and Charles H. Revson Foundations, among others.

Mark has led eminence and content strategy for Deloitte’s CEO Program since 2015.

His work as a consultant and professor has inspired his writing for such publications as Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Journal of Management Consulting, as well as his previous book, Guiding Growth: How Vision Keeps Companies on Course (Harvard Business School Press, 2003). A leading authority on the founders’ dilemma, the strong and often dysfunctional psychological forces that organizational founders experience when they are pressured to step down, Mark has been a frequent commentator on National Public Radio’s Marketplace to discuss CEO transitions in the corporate sector.

Mark holds a PhD from the School of Management at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and was an Erik Erikson Visiting Scholar-in-Residence in 2009 at the Austen Riggs Center. He lives in New York City and the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.