Getting Your Vision Shared by All
A practical playbook for turning message into movement
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” – John F. Kennedy, Address to Congress, May 25, 1961
On that day, President John F. Kennedy stood before Congress and set a bold goal: send a man to the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.
That single statement rallied more than half a million scientists, engineers, contractors, and government employees around a mission that seemed impossible. Over the next eight years, their collective alignment turned one of history’s boldest goals into reality.
It is astounding what can be accomplished when everyone is aligned and moving in the same direction. For Kennedy, it was the moon. For Henry Ford, the Model T. For Bill Gates, a computer on every desk. Each declared a bold, simple future and brought people together to make it real.
What bold future have you declared for your team, and is it clear to everyone?
Your goal may not shape human history, but to you and your team it matters just as much.
Every great leader creates a compelling direction. The truly exceptional go further. They align their people around it with passion, focus, shared commitment, and relentless execution.
The opposite is also true. When purpose is unclear or unshared, priorities clash, culture drifts, and energy drains instead of multiplying.
Establishing direction is not enough. Getting it shared by all is where the magic happens.
The Repetition Rule
Sharing your vision is not a one-time town hall or offsite. It takes consistent exposure and repetition.
People need to hear it seven times before they truly hear it for the first time.
The “seven times” rule has roots in marketing and psychology. Hollywood found audiences needed multiple exposures before buying a ticket. Psychologist George Miller later showed people process information in chunks of about seven.
Leaders get tired of repeating the message long before employees get tired of hearing it. That is the trap: assuming repetition is overkill when it is actually the requirement.
If you are not blue in the face from repeating it, your people probably have not heard it enough.
Here is how it usually plays out:
First exposure: they register it exists.
Second and third: they realize it is not just a passing fad.
By the fifth, sixth, and seventh: they start to internalize it and see where they fit.
At that point, people are either inspired and bought in, or they opt out. Sometimes leaders need to help them move out. Either way, clarity beats confusion.
Try this: ask three employees to explain your vision this week. Do the answers line up?
The 5 Critical Touchpoints in the Employee Journey
So where do these exposures come from? In my experience, there are five critical touchpoints that create the system for repetition and alignment. Done consistently, they turn vision from a slogan into something people live and act on every day.
Here’s what those touchpoints look like at a glance:
Five opportunities through the employee journey to get your vision shared by all.
1. Hiring
If you wait until after hiring to share your vision, you have already missed a critical opportunity. Sharing it upfront avoids surprises and inspires the right people from the start.
Share the bigger picture during the interview process. It should excite the right candidates and filter out the wrong ones. Life is too short to bring someone aboard who is not aligned, only to move them out later. Ask yourself: Do they resonate with your values? Are they passionate about your why and what? Do they believe in where you are headed?
At Castelblanco Law Group, sharing the company’s vision is a key part of the hiring process. They are open about who they are and clear about where they are going. When candidates hear the direction, the reactions are telling: some shrink back, others light up. When eyes light up and the skills fit, they have found the right home, and the company has found its next right-fit team member.
2. Onboarding
Onboarding is where first impressions get reinforced and translated into action.
Reinforce the mission immediately. Review it again. Remind new hires where they fit into the bigger picture and how they contribute. Early exposure sets the tone: “This is what we are building, and here is your role in it.”
At Magnet 360, where I first learned the real power all aligned around a common vision, every onboarding checklist included a step for our COO to personally review the V/TO (Vision/Traction Organizer, EOS’s two-page business plan) with each new hire. This clarified what we were working toward, showed people where they fit, and created a checkpoint for questions and alignment.
3. Quarterly State of the Company (SOC)
After onboarding, the next milestone is alignment at scale. This happens through a quarterly State of the Company meeting.
Research shows 90 days is the sweet spot: long enough to make progress, short enough to need a reset. That is why great organizations use this cadence to realign priorities, refresh the mission, and refuel energy.
A State of the Company meeting brings everyone together to:
Reaffirm where you have been, where you are, and where you are going
Create transparency and build trust
Re-energize the team around the priorities for the next 90 days
At the heart of this company-wide meeting is realignment. Leadership shares progress from the past quarter, reinforces long-term goals, and connects the next 90 days’ priorities back to that larger purpose.
Laney LA, a leading Los Angeles design studio, does this well. Each quarter, founder Anthony Laney leads a company-wide meeting at their Hermosa Beach headquarters. Since adopting the practice, the firm has grown 60 percent and won multiple AIA awards.
As Anthony explains, the meetings “funnel all their human energy to a singular target,” and the team leaves refreshed, realigned, and recharged. For new hires, it is one more step toward internalizing the mission. For seasoned employees, it is a critical refresh.
A quarterly SOC is one of the most powerful tools for keeping your direction alive. Progress updates, priority setting, and recognition all flow from that compass. By this point, your people have heard the vision three times. For many, this is when it stops sounding like a slogan and starts feeling real.
4. Quarterly Departmental Planning
Following the State of the Company meeting, teams realign their objectives for the next 90 days through departmental planning. This should happen within days of the SOC meeting, while priorities are still fresh.
In these meetings, each team should:
Review the bigger picture so it stays top of mind
Set objectives that move the organization 90 days closer to its future goals
Confirm how their work connects to the mission
This step gives teams another exposure to the message and creates space for dialogue about how their function contributes. It transforms the company-wide purpose into concrete departmental commitments, ensuring goals are set with the bigger picture in mind, not in isolation.
At Laney LA, these sessions help team members connect daily work to purpose. When operations faced a vendor choice, the discussion made the answer clear: they chose client experience over cost savings. The vision had shifted from poster to decision-making filter.
By this point, your people have now heard the direction four times. Each team member recommits to moving it forward with clarity on their personal contribution. For many, this is when it begins to shift from something leadership says to something the team truly owns.
Could every department in your company explain how their goals connect to the bigger picture?
5. Quarterly 1:1s
The final step is reinforcing the vision through consistent quarterly 1:1 conversations.. These conversations:
Link individual growth and contribution to the vision
Clarify expectations and alignment with company direction
Correct misalignment early or deepen buy-in
For one client in agriculture, a quarterly 1:1 helped an operations leader struggling to see her role in the bigger picture. Connecting her work to the company’s long-term direction re-energized her, and she soon led one of the firm’s top-performing teams.
For another client in professional services, a quarterly 1:1 revealed ongoing misalignment. Despite strong skills, a senior manager resisted the company’s direction. The conversation brought clarity, and he chose to exit, saving the team months of frustration and opening space for someone aligned.
By this point, employees have heard the vision five times in their first quarter. Early in the second, they hit the critical seventh exposure. Within two quarters, they are either fully bought in or it becomes clear they are not the right fit.
And while these structured touchpoints matter most, the most effective leaders take it further. They make the vision so visible and ever-present that people cannot help but internalize it.
Make the Vision Visible
Between the touchpoints above, make your direction easy to see and impossible to miss. Core values, goals, purpose, and priorities should not live in a binder. They should be front and center.
Ways I have seen this work:
On the walls
In meeting rooms
On every desk
In SOC handouts
Even on shirts
At Magnet 360, we printed our V/TO and values in every conference room and updated them quarterly. Every meeting reminded the team why we were there and where we were going.
Making it visible is the final layer of reinforcement, surrounding people with reminders until the message becomes second nature.
The Payoff of Shared Vision
Getting your vision shared by all is not a one-time announcement. It is a discipline. Through hiring, onboarding, quarterly meetings, departmental planning, 1:1s, and visible reminders, your people hear the message until it becomes part of how they think, decide, and act.
Repetition is not nagging. It is leadership. When people are aligned, energy multiplies. Decisions come faster. Culture strengthens. When they are not, energy drains, priorities clash, and culture drifts.
The goal is simple: make it impossible for anyone in your organization to miss the bigger picture. By the time they have heard it seven times, the right people will be committed and energized. For those who are not, clarity comes quickly, and you can move forward with a fully aligned team.
If half a million people could align to put a man on the moon, imagine what your team of 10, 100, or 500 can accomplish when the mission is truly shared by all.
If you asked every person in your organization tomorrow to explain the vision, would you like the answers?
If not, the work starts now.
Footnotes & Sources
John F. Kennedy, Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs, May 25, 1961. The full transcript is available at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
Herbert E. Krugman, “Why Three Exposures May Be Enough,” Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 12, No. 6 (1972). Krugman’s work built on early advertising research from Hollywood in the 1930s showing repeated exposures were necessary for consumer action.
George A. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” Psychological Review, Vol. 63, No. 2 (1956).
Katy Milkman & Hengchen Dai, “The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior,” Management Science, Vol. 60, No. 10 (2014). This research highlights why quarterly or temporal resets help people refocus.
Jim Collins, Good to Great (HarperBusiness, 2001). Collins’ work on “getting the right people on the bus” underlines the importance of alignment from the very start of hiring.
EOS Worldwide, The Vision/Traction Organizer® (V/TO®) is a two-page strategic planning tool that helps leadership teams clarify, simplify, and achieve their vision. Learn more at www.eosworldwide.com/vto.
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