When you really boil it down, leadership is about two things: figuring out where you’re going, and moving a group of people from here to there. If you haven't done the first part—which we’ll shorthand as creating vision—the second part becomes nearly impossible.

Too many PE-backed executives get this backwards. They're so deep in the daily firefight that they never lift their heads long enough to see past today. Consequently, their "vision" becomes nothing more than a collection of uninspiring buzzwords: "Grow revenue." "Be the premier provider of blah blah blah," "Drive shareholder value." As a result, their team is left with a fuzzy, pixelated view of where they’re supposed to be going together. And you can’t expect people to sprint enthusiastically toward a destination they can barely see.

Here's what your people need instead: a vision so clear and compelling that they want to follow you there. In Ascend, we call this "wearing the Captain hat." The Captain's job isn't to push the team harder. It's to see farther and reach higher. It's to point to a destination worth rowing toward, one that pulls their team forward.

Think about what a real captain does. No captain shoves off the dock without knowing where they're sailing. And no crew will leave the safety of land if the captain can't describe the destination or explain why the journey is worth the risk.

That's what real vision does. It gives people the conviction to leave safety and step into uncertainty because you've painted a picture of what's waiting on the other side.

Every PE-backed company needs that kind of leader: someone who can see past the noise of today and point to the promise of tomorrow. And your people are hungry for this. Research by Kouzes and Posner found that being forward-looking ranks among the top two traits people most admire in their leaders, second only to honesty. Fundamentally, your people want to know where you're taking them.

But to create a vision that pulls your team forward, you first must be able to see it yourself. 

WHY PE LEADERS STRUGGLE TO SEE PAST TODAY

But here’s the challenge we face as leaders: most of us aren’t naturally wired that way. Our brains are wired for survival. And survival requires focusing on what's urgent. 

Psychologists call it present bias. It’s our tendency as humans to focus on what’s immediate and tangible, even when it’s not what matters most long-term. It's why you'll spend two hours chasing down a small win today instead of spending thirty minutes designing the future you actually want. Your brain rewards the immediate. It prioritizes the urgent over the important. That's not a character flaw—it's neurobiology.

This wiring works fine if you're a manager. Managers are paid to run today. They keep the wheels on the track, and that matters. You can't lead a business into the future if you can't manage it in the present.

But leadership calls for something more. It requires the discipline to do both: manage execution and create direction. It's not either/or. It's both/and. Managing execution keeps you afloat. Leading with vision moves you forward.

The leaders who ascend in PE are the ones who figure out how to do both.

THE POWER OF A BOLD AND COMPELLING VISION

John F. Kennedy gave the world a masterclass in the power of vision and forward-thinking. In 1961, he stood before a joint session of Congress and declared something that changed the course of human history:

“This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

It was bold, compelling, specific, and time-bound. And you could tell he had a high-definition picture in his mind of where he wanted to take people.

But here's what really made it powerful: it made people feel something. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to believe you were being invited into something historic, and feel energized and emboldened by it. Dr. John Kotter’s work in Leading Change reminds us why that matters: logic drives understanding, but emotion drives action. In other words, data informs, but emotion ignites. 

Kennedy knew this. He didn’t say, “By 1970, we will generate $100B in economic impact from space exploration.” He didn’t show charts or projections. He painted a picture of possibility, one that the entire country could see themselves in.

The story goes that on a visit to NASA, Kennedy asked a janitor what he was doing. The man replied: “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” That’s the power of a clear, compelling vision: it gives everyone—from the boardroom to the loading dock—a shared picture of where they're going and why it matters. 

But this is also why so many “vision statements” in PE-backed companies miss the mark. “To be the premier provider of blah blah blah,” or “To achieve $100M EBITDA by 2035,” doesn’t make anyone’s pulse quicken. No one’s waking up early or staying late for that.

A clear and compelling vision gives your people something far more compelling to play for. A horizon worth rowing toward. Something bigger than a paycheck or a KPI or an EBITDA target. Here’s how to create the kind of vision that pulls them forward.

HOW TO DEVELOP A VISION PEOPLE WILL ACTUALLY FOLLOW

1. Begin with the end in mind.

Stephen Covey made this idea famous in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. “Beginning with the end in mind” is simply this: you get clear on the destination before you take the first step. You picture the finish line before you start the race.

No builder pours a foundation without a blueprint. No architect sketches a floor plan without knowing what the building should look like when it's done. But I've watched countless executives try to "build" a business with only a foggy idea of where they're heading.

Stop. Back up. Answer these questions first:  

Where are we going? 

What does winning actually look like? 

What’s the finish line? 

It doesn’t matter if you’re mapping the long-term vision, the “vision” for next quarter, or the finish line for a project. The discipline is the same: get crystal clear on the end state, then reverse-engineer the path to get there.

2. See it before you say it.

It’s tough to enroll others in a future you can’t see clearly yourself. So shut your laptop. Close your eyes. Picture your business five to ten years from now as if you’ve time-traveled there. What have you achieved? What are customers saying? What’s your reputation in the market? What does success look and feel like inside the company? 

Neuroscience tells us why this practice of visualizing future success can be so powerful and useful. When you visualize the desired future state vividly, it makes it feel more real, and your brain starts firing the same neural circuits it would if you were living that success IRL. In a way, your brain is rehearsing the future before it happens, which helps it to start aligning your decisions to make it come true. 

Elite athletes and performance psychologists have understood the power of visualization for decades. Olympians, Navy SEALs, and world-class musicians all use visualization because it gives them a mental edge before they set foot on the field of play.

But strangely, many business leaders see this practice as woo-woo. It’s a mistake. You must be able to see it (visualize success vividly in your own mind) before you say it (cast it in your organization to get others onboard).

3. Craft a compelling vision narrative.

Seeing it in your head isn’t enough. You need to write it down. Describe your desired future state, your vision, in the present tense as if it’s already true. Describe what the future looks, feels, and sounds like when your company has achieved smashing success. 

Writing down this picture of future success forces clarity. It crystallizes fuzzy thinking. It also hardwires the vision into your brain, making it clearer and more memorable. 

As you write it, make it vivid. Paint a high-resolution picture so when you eventually share it with others, people can see what you see and imagine themselves in it. When you do that, the vision stops being an abstract slogan (“To be the premier provider of…”) and becomes something real, concrete, and worth building together.

4. Avoid platitudes and clichés.

When you’re crafting your vision, concrete beats generic every time. So as you write your vision narrative, make sure your words match the clarity you have in your own mind. “We want to be the best-in-class blah blah blah” isn’t vision. It’s just empty corporate speak. 

Concrete, vivid language sticks way better because the brain remembers pictures, not platitudes. When your words create images people can see, they start to believe in them. Corporate-speak does the opposite: it fogs up the view. So cut the filler. Say what you really see the future looking like. 

5. Build it together.

As you’re writing down your vision, don’t carve it in stone. Treat it like wet cement. Share it with your team and ask for their input. Say, “Here’s what I see. But what do you see when you picture a successful future for our company?” Listen carefully. Capture what resonates. And use it to refine the vision narrative.

Why do this? Because people need to weigh in to buy in. Ultimately, a vision is only as useful as your ability to enroll people in it. And they'll be much more likely to get behind it if they’ve helped author it.

THE BOTTOM LINE

For all its complexities, at the core, leadership is quite simple: see the future, show the future, move people toward it. If you don’t first define the future, you can’t lead people into it. 

 As John Maxwell said, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” That’s the job.