To have a vision or not – that is a good question!

For many, the notion of “having a vision” evokes a compelling image of the future—something definite and desired. In traditional work thinking, especially from the 20th century, vision was tightly tied to the machinery of goal setting and strategic planning. You defined a destination, then mapped out the mission, objectives, and tactics to arrive at the destination. Clarity, certainty, and control were paramount. Vision was success. And ambiguity? That was failure.

But what if I challenged that notion?

I recently watched a Masterclass by Ava DuVernay: Reframe Your Thinking where she marries the idea of being a director of film to being a director of our own life. (Very Self unLimited, right!) She uses her experience in the making of her film, Origin, to convey her ideas. It is a class in how one might be a great filmmaker as well as how live and work impactfully.  During the class, Ms DuVernay described vision as “knowing your destination.” This didn’t sit quite right with me. While I appreciated her clarity, something about that definition felt too fixed. Let me expand on why.

I am always exploring ideas from complexity thinking. One of my favourite thinkers in this space is Sonja Blignaut, and her recent writing on the concept of wayfinding (evolving into way craft) has caught my attention. In one perspective that draws on Polynesian navigation traditions, wayfinding proposes a very different relationship to goals and vision. It’s not about following a marked path to a defined endpoint. It’s about sensing, responding, and orienting yourself as you move forward. You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going, you do need to be skilled at paying attention. You might enjoy her article about Letting the Island Find You.

Dave Snowden, known for the Cynefin® framework, adds another useful concept from the vector theory of change, which is an approach to moving towards a desirable future, particularly when the situation is complex (PDF). Here, change is about moving in a direction, not aiming for a destination. You define a vector, a heading, not an explicit goal or finish line. This resonates more with my lived experience.

I’ve never connected to the idea of SMART goals. Intellectually, I get their appeal. There’s a seductive neatness to being able to articulate a five-year plan. But I’ve never found them useful.

Ask me, “Where do you want to be in five years?” and I’ll say “It depends”. There’s just too much that is unknowable and outside my control. I can have intentions. Sometimes just possibilities. I often wonder and remain open to what might come. And oddly, maybe poetically, life has had a way of weaving those faint threads of curiosity into reality.

Like the time when, at 14, I drove past a beautiful multi-storey building in a city I didn’t live in and thought vaguely, “It might be nice to live in a place like that.” Thirteen years later, I moved into a single-storey apartment directly across the street from it. I hadn’t made it a goal. I hadn’t researched the neighbourhood. I wasn’t even thinking about that building when I chose the place. It was only after settling in that I looked out the window, saw the building across the street and remembered that fleeting teenage thought.

Or a dream I had about 16, where I was standing in an auditorium speaking fluent Russian to an audience. Fourteen years later, I found myself standing in a high school hall in Japan, speaking in Japanese to students. Not Russian. But close enough in feeling and function. Again, there had been no planning, no “vision” or goal to guide me there. Just a moment, a dream, a possibility among many.

These and other such experiences shape how I relate to vision. For me, it’s less a destination and more a direction held lightly. ‘Strategic intentions’ feel more natural than a ‘vision’. These carry the flavour of a hypothesis which helps me acknowledge that I don’t know all that I don’t know. That life is dynamic. That I want to stay open to possibilities and opportunities that are yet to cross my path or get my attention.

This reframing has freed me. Freed me from the illusion of control that comes from defining the future too tightly. Freed me to stay attuned and responsive … to wayfind. Vision, in this context, becomes not a concrete image, but a living idea. One that nourishes imagination and invites collaboration with the unfolding world.

It also shifts the question from “What do I want to do?” to “Who do I want to be?” This reorientation feels both more relevant and more generous. It opens space for multiple futures, rather than a single path. It also invites preparation of a different kind.

Ava DuVernay calls this soft prep. It’s the inner work and environmental tuning that happens before a film shoot begins following her particular approach. For her, it’s not about blocking out scenes or locking down schedules. It’s about tuning in to a mindset and an ethos. It’s reading things that spark ideas. Watching things that stir emotion. Having conversations that stretch your perspective. It’s creating the mental, emotional, and relational soil from which something rich and true might grow.

Soft prep is time spent tending to readiness, not certainty.

I’ve come to think of soft prep as vocational composting. You let things break down, merge, mix as fragments of ideas, memories, inklings of identity. And then, when conditions are right, something starts to sprout. You don’t plant a single seed; you create the conditions for emergence.

This leads me to metaphors.

Because how we think about the future is deeply influenced by the images we hold of progress.

The metaphor of a plantation has been unconsciously dominant in much planning and visioning. Neat rows, known outputs, strong fences, and a singular goal: yield. This way of thinking lends itself to fixed visions and metrics. But it also assumes high control, low complexity, and little adaptability.

By contrast, the metaphor of a rainforest holds more promise for navigating life’s complexities. A rainforest is layered and dynamic. It holds contradiction. Growth is not linear. Things decay and become nutrients. New species emerge. There’s constant exchange. There’s mystery. You don’t control a rainforest — you observe, interact, and respond. You belong to it as much as you shape it.

When I think about how I orient myself toward the future, I prefer rainforest-thinking. It invites me to listen, adapt, collaborate, and make room for surprise. It honours that I am not the only agent at play, that other people, patterns, and forces are always in motion too.

Soft prep, then, is my way of being a good rainforest dweller. It’s tending to the ecology of my attention, my curiosity, and my readiness.

And within that ecology, constraints play a surprising role.

In complexity thinking, there’s a distinction between governing constraints and enabling constraints. Governing constraints impose rules and limits, like a plantation’s tidy gridlines. Enabling constraints, by contrast, create conditions for emergence. They offer shape without rigidity, just enough structure to encourage flow, variation, and adaptation.

Think of a rainforest. It doesn’t flourish because every plant does what it wants. It thrives because of certain constraints:

• The canopy filters light, forcing plants below to adapt or evolve differently.
• The soil and moisture levels create nutrient feedback loops, allowing fungi, roots, and microorganisms to coexist and support each other.
• Fallen trees become nurse logs which decay slowly and offer structure for new life to grow on top.

These are constraints but they enable emergence.

In my workscape, I’ve come to recognise similar enabling constraints:

• Time blocks in my day that I protect for creative drift but with a boundary so I don’t sink into overwhelm.
• A single word or question I set at the start of a research project to orient my attention — not a to-do list, just a compass.
• A financial limit, rather than being restrictive, has often prompted more resourcefulness and elegant solutions in how I pursue an idea.

In a world that is constantly shifting, constraints are not static either. As I change, and the world around me changes, new conditions emerge. Staying attuned to these shifting conditions means I can adjust how I move, what I create, and who I’m becoming. Constraints aren’t the enemy of freedom. They are often the structure in which freedom becomes meaningful.

So while I don’t hold to fixed visions, I do pay attention to boundaries. Some are immovable, others negotiable, and some self-imposed. Each is part of the terrain I’m navigating, not to be avoided, but engaged with thoughtfully.

So, to have a vision or not?

Perhaps yes. But not one written in granite. Let it be a working hypothesis. Let your direction be alive, not defined by clarity alone, but by your capability to nurture, nourish, and navigate with awareness and humility.

Because the future doesn’t need you to be certain, it needs you to be attentive.

Author

Helen Palmer is a workscape navigator, and creator of the Self unLimited philosophy. She helps people take ownership of their workscape, which can include reframing concepts that are taken for granted like vision. She shares what works for her so others can see possiblities for crafting a workscape that is meaningful and valuable.

This article was written with creative assistance from ChatGPT (generative AI tool).

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash