Writing a new vision around a future some units are not central to signals where investment and status will go and makes arguments for the old priorities harder to win.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Four months into the job, the new chief executive of a hotel group had decided what the company would be in five years: digital guest experience, loyalty, and franchise growth. The draft vision mentioned engineering and property maintenance once, as foundations the company would keep strong. Before releasing it, the chief executive met the head of engineering, explained that maintenance budgets would be held flat in real terms while growth money went to the three priorities, and asked for a plan to run two hundred properties on that basis. The vision went out in September and was written into the budget template by January. The engineering head's plan, which consolidated three regional teams, was approved without a fight, and two capital requests that fit none of the pillars were turned down with the vision cited as the reason.
Why it works
Writing the future around some functions makes the case for others look worse: their advocacy reads as backward-looking, and the forward-looking value of their work drops out of the argument. Resisting also gets costlier, because it means opposing the vision itself, a document authored by senior leadership and full of the language of progress. Its force depends on the document's institutional weight, whether it is cited in budgets, promotions, and external communications. It weakens when the omitted function has independent standing, such as a finance team that controls the cash, or when outsiders read the omission as reckless.
The thinking behind it
Pierre Bourdieu In Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972), Bourdieu treats prestige and recognition as symbolic capital, a resource that works because others acknowledge it as legitimate and that can be converted into economic resources. A function placed at the center of the official vision gains symbolic capital, which then turns into budget and promotions. A function left in the background loses standing before any money moves, which is why its defense works best through authorities the vision cannot override.
Erving Goffman Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (1974) describes frames as organizing principles that answer the question of what is going on here. A vision document supplies the frame for every later budget request: growth through digital, loyalty, and franchising. Requests that fit the frame read as progress, and those that do not read as looking backward, which is why carrying the vision into the budget template gives it force.
When it fits
Strategy resets after a leadership change, an acquisition, or a market shift, when the company really is going to invest unevenly, are where it belongs. You need the authority to write the vision, the intent to carry it into budgets and promotions, and a clear view of which functions it can safely leave in the background.
How to use it well
Decide what the company will be, then write the vision around that, with the functions that matter most to it at the center.
- Name the background functions honestly as foundations, and say what level of support they will get.
- Tell the leaders of those functions directly, before release, with the budget consequences.
- Carry the vision into the budget template and promotion criteria, or it will be read as decoration.
- Check it against the capabilities the business depends on today, such as regulatory, contractual, and safety obligations.
Expect the omitted functions to argue back through outside authorities, and have the answer ready.
What it costs and where it backfires
Functions written out of the future lose talent first, and the ones you still need running can decay unnoticed until something breaks. An omission that a regulator or a large customer reads as reckless costs credibility. The move stays honest while the vision is plain about what the company will and will not fund. Using it to push out named people, or to keep a planned closure from the people affected until it is too late for them to respond, crosses into concealment, and the function's leaders will read every later document in that light.
When it is used on you
If your function is left out, anchor its work to an authority the vision cannot override: a board mandate, a regulation, a contract, a customer dependency. Ask for an explicit statement of the support you will get, and find allies outside the leader's narrative who depend on your work.