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How do you figure out what the destination should be?

Probably the smartest thing I've learned about visions is that you should always begin by looking at what you've got. What's been the plan for your area or department up until now, the goals everybody has been asked to work toward? Within that framework, what's good, what's bad, and what's turned seriously ugly? That sounds like a pretty basic approach and yet it's amazing how often in business people choose not to follow it. They come in with a kind of snooty attitude and develop a plan based purely on how things “ought” to be or how they were done at the last place they worked They ignore the strengths or even trample on them They cither fail to deal with the weaknesses or end up perpetuating them.

In the magazine industry there have been editors-in-chief who take over an existing magazine with a vision that sounds dazzling when described in the trade publications or the New York Times media column but shows no respect for what was working about the magazine to begin with The new editor will then use the letter-from-the-editor page to explain how weak the previous magazine was The reader is left thinking he or she must have been a real doofus to have been reading it.

FIND THE STRENGTHS—NO MATTER WHERE THEY'RE BURIED

If you've inherited a real dud of an area, there may not be many strengths to speak of. But chances are there's something worthwhile to examine—it just may be buried under layers of dust or discontent.

I had the opportunity to talk not long ago to Dr. Clyda Rent, the extraordinary president of Mississippi University for Women, a school she has totally revitalized and put on the map in five years. Though the college had lost the reputation of its golden years, when she was being recruited for the job she could see, just walking around the campus, that there were fabulous assets. The campus was absolutely gorgeous, with twenty-four historic landmark buildings. There was an excellent faculty. Dr. Rent eventually learned that there were also many distinguished alumnae, including Pulitzer Prize–winning author Eudora Welty. One other major plus: The school was very affordable.

Over time, however, people had lost sight of these strengths. “Everyone was so beaten up by politics of closure threats that they didn't see what a fabulous jewel they were sitting on,” Rent says. The buildings, for instance, had become run down. There was no mention in any of the campus promotion pieces of the great alumnae.

Rent's vision began to emerge, and it was all about using the strengths she saw, rather than creating something brand-new. She decided to refurbish the buildings and promote the alumnae and publicize the affordable cost even more. She would build MUW's reputation as a school with a beautiful setting, terrific faculty, a distinguished history, and low tuition. During the past five years “the W” has grown at a rate that is twenty-five times the average of the other Mississippi universities and four times the national average. The National Wingspread Conference named MUW one of the “Twenty Model Colleges” in America for “exemplary undergraduate education.”

In probing for the strengths, you have to be open to any source that can offer clues. That means the people you work with, including subordinates, and those on the outside, too. There's a legendary editor-in-chief in women's magazine publishing who recently took over a new magazine. Every person I know who went to interview for a position there told me that she asked them, “What would you do if you were me?” How shrewd she was. She pumped everybody, gathering, for free, people's ideas and insights.

And remember that the strengths you develop should be those that will work in the marketplace in the future as well as today. “The strengths I saw at MUW were ones that I thought would serve students well in the twenty-first century,” says Dr. Rent.

THE AMAZING BENEFIT OF REALLY BAD NEWS

It's one thing to probe for the good. Probing for the bad can be tougher, especially