What leaders can learn about vision from Mystic Meg and Willy Wonka...

When I meet brilliant charity leaders, usually it becomes clear that they carry something persistent in their mind. It’s a picture - a vision, if you will - of what the world should and could be like. Safer. Fairer. Less Lonely. Connected. More possible.  When they are struggling out of bed on a cold December morning, it’s this picture that keeps them going... through change, budgeting, staff turnover, political ‘weather’, Teams channels, crap tea bags, policies and what to do about AI. 

Like Mystic Meg and Willy Wonka, they can see a possible future. But here’s the thing.  

Seeing a vision for the future and helping your people to find the way there are not the same thing. What great leaders do is guide, unlock, negotiate, listen and inspire. Otherwise, you’re a fortune teller or sweet maker, both loved, but rarely skills you’ll find on a leadership JD. If you’re struggling to join the dots between the vision you hope for and how to bring people with you, it’s not a failing.  It’s a normal leadership pinch point and it’s one you can fix.  

There are three very human reasons why this can happen 

1. You’ve been sitting with the vision longer than anyone else. 

You’ve absorbed the context, the political backdrop, the pain points, the potential, long before your team has. You have the gift of seeing the organisation and its place in the world from a holistic point of view. What feels obvious to you is likely to feel abstract or overwhelming to your team unless you take the time to lead them through it. 

2. You’re protecting people. 

Leaders often feel they need to tidy away the messy bits, so the team only sees a polished, perfect plan. People don’t need perfection though, they need clarity, honesty, purpose and a voice.  Protecting people treats them like children, infantilises and disenfranchises them, reducing engagement, passion and drive and increasing the risk of gap-filling, conjecture and noise.  If that wasn't enough, you also miss out on potential insights and expertise because of your distance from operations. 

3. You haven’t had the space to articulate it. 

Leaders can be overscheduled… there is a fine line between pace and frenetic energy. Unless you make it happen by planning it in, you will rarely get uninterrupted time to think, let alone inform how you communicate thinking in a way that brings people with you.   A vision becomes powerful when it stops being in your head and becomes: 

• A shared goal 

• An energising story 

• A clear, hopeful picture of what changes in the world because of your work 

• A bridge between people who usually operate in silos 

When you lay out the path ahead, even imperfectly, magic can happen… People start spotting opportunities you hadn’t seen; cross-functional teams begin to form naturally; energy rises because everyone understands why their bit matters and decisions become easier because you’ve created a north star. Work feels less like firefighting and more like building something important. 

I’ve talked about the importance of clarity before, and it is liberating. It gives people permission to act. 

 Here’s what we see working brilliantly with the leaders we support: 

1. Bringing your organisation to life 

Use data and stories from your impact to inspire your team and show them the path of why and where you’re headed, and help it feel manageable (if you need a hand with that, let us know).  

2. Bringing teams into the shaping. 

Never as a tokenistic exercise, but because the collective intelligence, experience and curiosity in your organisation are priceless. Ask things like: 

• What are you seeing that I can’t? 

• Where do we need to be bold, and what do we need to protect? 

3. Anchoring everything in purpose. Why are you here and what would happen if your organisation did not exist… 

A vision isn’t a slogan. It’s a promise about the world you want to see.  Remind your people why this matters to service users, communities, and supporters. 

4. Translating the ambition into a small number of moves. 

Cross-team moves and efforts that require shared action, not just functional plans. Three to five is plenty. Anything more will over-face your team and become unworkable. 

5. Being hopeful - what is more hopeful than a group of people dedicated to changing the world? 

Your role is to bring clarity not by tightening the reins but by showing your people the path and pointing to possibility.  

A final thought for leaders who want to be less Meg and Wonka and more… helpful 

You don’t need a perfect strategy to inspire your team, you just need a clear, human story about where you’re going and an invitation for your people to help shape the path.  When leaders like you communicate vision well, teams don’t just understand the future. They start building it with you. 

Bringing vision, impact and strategy to life is what brings us joy here at Better.  If you would like to talk through your approach or find out more about the work we do, get in touch at info@betterconsult.co.uk. We’re neither fortune tellers nor confectionary moguls, instead we bring our lived experience and expertise to help make the world a better place.