Vision is an aspirational, future-oriented description of the world an organization or community seeks to create, providing a compelling and concrete image that inspires action, guides strategy, and creates alignment across diverse participants.
Vision functions as a north star that orients collective effort toward a shared destination, making abstract purpose tangible and actionable. While purpose addresses the fundamental “why” behind collective action, vision articulates the specific “what” - the observable conditions and outcomes that will exist when purpose is realized. This clarity helps translate broad values and aspirations into strategic direction and practical decision-making.
In decentralized contexts, vision plays a crucial coordination role by creating coherence without requiring centralized control. When participants share a vivid, meaningful vision of success, they can make autonomous decisions that naturally align with collective aims. Effective visions balance aspiration with achievability, clarity with adaptability, and boldness with practical relevance to the organization’s capabilities and context.
Uses of “Vision”
Vision in DAO Governance
In DAO governance frameworks, vision provides the strategic direction that guides long-term decision-making. As explored in Governance for better futures, effective governance requires “metaframes” that help diverse stakeholders navigate complexity while maintaining direction. Vision serves this purpose by establishing a shared destination that governance mechanisms can protect and advance.
The relationship between vision and governance is bidirectional - vision guides governance design, while governance processes ensure that vision remains relevant and alive in organizational practice. In two-house governance structures, Community Governance often takes responsibility for articulating and safeguarding vision, ensuring that operational activities remain aligned with the organization’s aspirational future.
Vision in Decentralized Coordination
In decentralized coordination contexts, vision creates alignment without requiring command-and-control structures. When autonomous teams share a clear vision of success, they can self-organize effectively toward common goals while maintaining their independence and contextual responsiveness.
As described in DAOs - From fractal primitives to network scale., this enables a network to “reorient itself organically” as participants flow toward the most promising opportunities for realizing the shared vision. Unlike traditional strategic planning that attempts to dictate specific paths, vision-based coordination allows multiple approaches to emerge and evolve based on learning and changing conditions.
Vision in Social Impact
In social impact and community contexts, vision articulates the systemic change organizations seek to create in the world. These visions often address complex social, environmental, and economic transformations that require collaborative effort across diverse stakeholders and extended timeframes.
Effective impact visions connect individual and community aspirations to broader systemic change, helping participants see how their specific contributions advance transformative outcomes. As noted in Exploring governance for better futures, vision-driven approaches help systems “develop novel ways of organizing and new institutions” capable of addressing complex challenges at appropriate scales.
Related Concepts
- Purpose: The fundamental reason for existence that vision makes concrete and observable
- Values: The principles and beliefs that shape how vision is pursued and realized
- Goals: Specific, measurable objectives that mark progress toward realizing the vision
- Transformation: The process of fundamental change that vision seeks to create
- Agreements: Shared understandings that include commitment to collective vision
References and Resources
- Governance for better futures - Meta-governance: Explores vision as part of meta-governance frameworks
- DAOs - From fractal primitives to network scale.: Discusses how vision enables organic network evolution
- Building DAOs as scalable networks: Examines vision’s role in network coordination