The Modern Version: Your VTO
Now, let me translate that into the fear I see all the time.
Leaders tell me they love their VTO. It captures their vision, their ten-year target, three-year picture, one-year plan, priorities, values, the lot. They have poured their heart & soul into it.
They are happy to share it with their leadership team, because that feels “safe”. They trust those people.
Then we talk about sharing it with the rest of the organisation, & suddenly the room goes quiet.
What if someone leaks it?
What if a disgruntled employee sends it to a competitor?
What if a supplier sees it, or a friend of a friend, or worse, that rival they have been watching nervously for years?
So, they keep it close. Maybe they drip-feed bits of it. A goal here, a value there, a vague “direction of travel” in a quarterly update. But the full VTO stays locked in a folder that only leaders can access.
On the surface, it sounds cautious & responsible. Look after the crown jewels. Protect the secret strategy.
Here is the uncomfortable truth. If a leaked PDF of your VTO can seriously damage your business, then your competitive advantage was never that strong in the first place.
Your VTO is the tap.
Your plumbing is how you actually run the business.
What Competitors Can Steal, & What They Cannot
Let us be brutally honest for a minute.
A competitor can copy:
- Your ten-year revenue target
- Your three-year aspirations
- Your one-year goals
- Your focus areas
- Even your values & your marketing messages, if they try hard enough
They can take the visible bits, the nice-looking fixtures.
What they cannot copy is:
- How your leadership team makes decisions
- How you actually prioritise when everything feels urgent
- How you tackle issues, honestly, in a room together
- How accountable you all are to each other, especially when things go wrong
- The thousands of small behaviour choices your people make every day
- The trust you build by being transparent with your team
That is the plumbing. The culture. The discipline. The rhythm. The way you live that VTO, not the way you format it.
If a competitor somehow gets their hands on your VTO, they are basically bolting your tap to the side of their hut. It might look smart, but there will be no water.
The Real Problem is Not the Leak
I want to challenge something head-on.
When leaders refuse to share their VTO beyond the leadership team, the real problem is rarely “someone might leak it”. That is the story we tell ourselves.
Underneath that story, I usually find:
- Fear that people lower in the organisation will challenge the vision
- Fear that the numbers will expose past poor performance
- Fear of being judged for how ambitious or unambitious the goals are
- Fear that, if the team knows the direction, they will also notice when leadership is not fully living it
So, secrecy becomes a shield.
“If they do not see it, they cannot criticise it.”
“If they do not know, they cannot leave.”
“If we just keep it at the top, we are safe.”
In reality, the exact opposite is true.
Your greatest risk is not that a competitor sees your VTO.
Your greatest risk is that your own people never do.
A Client Who Hid the Tap
One of my clients, let us call him Michael, had a beautiful VTO. He & his leadership team had worked hard on it. The company had about 40 people, with a small but mighty leadership team.
For months, only those 5 leaders were allowed to see the full document. The rest of the business got high-level hints in all hand’s meetings.
“We are going for strong growth.”
“We are focusing on customers & efficiency.”
“We have some big goals coming.”
Nothing terrible, but nothing specific either.
The team felt it. People were working hard, but many were pulling in slightly different directions. Middle managers were unsure how to prioritise. Staff kept asking “are we doing X or Y this year” & getting fuzzy answers. Everyone was trying, but there was no single clear picture.
Finally, after one particularly frustrating quarter, I challenged Michael directly.
“If a competitor saw your VTO tomorrow, do you really think they could replicate your team, your relationships, your processes, your culture?”
He paused, thought about it, & admitted that no, they could not.
The fear started to crack.
He agreed to share the full VTO at the next company gathering. Not just with the leadership team, not just with managers, but with everyone.
He walked them through the ten-year target, the three-year picture, the one-year plan, the priorities, the values, all of it. He gave them context, told the story behind it, & explained the trade-offs they had made.
Here is what did not happen:
- No one ran out of the room & emailed it to a competitor
- The business did not collapse
- Their rivals did not suddenly leap ahead
Here is what did happen:
- People finally understood why decisions were being made the way they were
- Team members at every level started making better day-to-day choices
- Managers felt confident aligning their teams because they could see the big picture
- Engagement went up because people could see how their role contributed to the plan
Months later, Michael said to me, “I cannot believe I sat on that for so long. Sharing the VTO was the turning point. It was the moment it stopped being my vision & became our vision.”
That is the power you are blocking when you hide your tap from the rest of the building.
The VTO Has to Flow Through the Whole Organisation
It is common for leaders to say, “We share the VTO with the leadership team, that is enough.”
It is not.
If only your leadership team sees the VTO, it is like running plumbing only to the first floor of a building & then complaining that nobody on the second & third floors is washing their hands.
You want:
- Frontline staff to understand why certain customers or projects are a priority
- Admin & support teams to know what “great” looks like in the context of your goals
- Middle managers to feel confident saying no to distractions that do not align with the vision
- Everyone to see how their role helps you move towards that ten-year target
You cannot expect that level of alignment if the only people who have seen the full picture are sitting around the leadership table.
If the VTO stops at the top, your plumbing is blocked.
The Blunt Bit
So, here is the devil’s advocate conclusion.
If your strategy is so fragile that a leaked VTO could destroy it, then you do not have a real strategy, you have a decorative document.
If your culture is so shaky that you cannot trust your own people with the vision, you do not have a people problem, you have a leadership problem.
If you want a business that truly runs on vision, traction & healthy culture, you cannot hoard the tap on one wall & expect water throughout the building.
Share the VTO. With everyone. Tell the story of it. Invite questions. Teach people how to use it in their day-to-day decisions.
Your competitors might copy your fixtures. Let them.
Your plumbing, if you build it properly, is yours alone.
