Sometimes a lack of corporate vision isn't as obvious as being told, "We're not re-investing in your company, you have no coherent strategy or vision." Sometimes it shows up in the behavior of people further down the chain of command.
I flew out from Massachusetts to join CharlieNet, and I was totally stoked. I was in Silicon Valley, where it was all happening, and I was working in the video game industry, something I'd dreamed of since I was a kid -- something I still think about trying to get back into.
Little did I know, I was walking into a disaster. The company blew through its $80 million investment in the first two years, and the results of the investment were not returning. Management was pathetic to non-existent; indeed, the engineering manager I worked for was eventually "promoted out of the way" because he was incompetent. Management issues are a completely separate chapter, though, and I'm sure this company will show up as a key example in many other places later in this book.
The lack of vision this company was suffering came through with this lack of management. Sales people were making deals without oversight, then going directly to engineers with their requirements. Inevitably, the "conversation" would go something like this:
"We just signed a deal to integrate with such-and-such, and we need it to go live next Monday," they would say on a Thursday afternoon.
"First of all," I would respond, "you're talking about a two-week project. Second of all, we've actually already designed and implemented that product; you've just signed us up with a direct competitor."
This was an actual paraphrasing of a conversation I had once. I implemented a total kludge (that means "hack", or "chewing gum and bailing wire solution", for those who don't know...) and got it out only a day or two late. We never turned it on. It turns out this guy either never really signed the deal, or someone else finally figured out what I told him off the bat -- there was no sense in doing that work.
Without a vision, this sales guy had no chance of making an informed decision around where to pursue opportunities. Without cohesive product management, there was no oversight, which might've caught this idiocy before it resulted in wasted effort.
Corporate vision must not only be defined, it must be communicated, throughout the organization. It allows your employees to make strategic decisions on their own, and since no CEO, of a sufficiently large company, can make every strategic decision on their own, a well-communicated and understandable vision means the people who do end up making decisions (even if they're temporary decisions) are more likely to make decisions that move the company towards the goals set out by the vision. Without such a vision, you may find people making contradicting decisions: One person making decisions to target the SMB (small and medium business) market, another person looking to tackle the Fortune 500. One person may take the company down a consumer path while another struggles to get footing in a strategic partnership environment.