Why successful organisations need more than vision and commitment

As business leaders, we recognize that any successful organisation (for profit or not for profit) needs three critical elements – vision, commitment and money. These are the backbone of our passion to take on tasks and challenges, lead with authenticity, and create impactful outcomes that we can deliver to our stakeholders.

Looking at the lifespans of businesses globally, the statistics seem to show that too many organisations believe that their vision and commitment will see them through, especially in their early years. In reality, many businesses cease to exist not because they lack vision or commitment – they lack money. Vision and commitment don’t pay the bills.

How we do anything is how we do everything 

In 2009, our 14-year-old daughter, Steph, was denied a life-changing school trip to Cambodia to volunteer with disadvantaged rural families. We decided to embrace the opportunity and travelled to Cambodia as a family, volunteering to teach English at a rural school in Siem Reap province. Those two weeks changed the course of our lives, and the lives of thousands of rural Cambodian students and their families. Our students were all the children of survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime and the ensuing civil war – while their parents were illiterate, they understood the value and importance of education. We returned to volunteer in Cambodia several more times and in 2011 founded the Cambodia Rural Students Trust NGO (CRST), with the vision of educating future leaders.

CRST is a unique Non-Government Organisation (NGO) because it’s entirely led and managed by our students. Through formal education, extensive mentoring and the opportunities to gain hands-on practical skills, the students of CRST also lead and manage projects in areas as diverse as women’s empowerment, energy poverty, social inequity and environmental degradation, reaching thousands of beneficiaries annually.

The vision for CRST was easy – education opens minds, provides opportunities and creates a far-reaching, long-lasting ripple effect in society. Our commitment was the determination to stick it out no matter what the universe put in our path – and for this we also needed our students’ commitment, not just our own. Our family provided funding for the first few years, but as we wanted to scale up, we had to start devoting time to marketing and sponsor relations.

Sharpening the saw 

As our organization grew, our team passionately embraced our vision. Each of our students now holds multiple roles across the organization and our six educational social enterprises, enabling them to gain valuable hands-on experiences in a variety of fields including general management, finance, communications and operations. Each position has a job description, job procedures, KPIs and reporting and evaluation processes.

We have refined our funding model to include not only individual and family sponsors for students but also to continually expand our network of corporate sponsors for our scholarships and community projects. We collaborate with companies that understand our collective social responsibility to nurture future leaders through meaningful contributions to our communities. These companies go beyond funding; they invest with purpose, empowering their teams to actively participate in a variety of our initiatives.

The learnings 

Vision –

• Vision is not enough; you must be a clear and effective communicator. Communicate with yourself and then communicate with others.
• Share your vision, don’t sell your dream – sharing your vision is much more empowering for the team.
• Don’t be afraid to update your vision – be in constant mode of renewal. Windows 11 doesn’t make Windows 3 wrong or stupid; it makes Windows 15 inevitable. Always seek to get better – that’s evolutionary strength, not weakness.

Commitment –

• When people are weaving of the fabric, they feel ownership and commitment, they want to do their best and do more.
• Team members who walk the journey are the best advocates to promote our vision and impact – we may have given them the shoes, but they walk in them.
• You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink – share your vision, inspire and support; the rest is up to the team member.

Money –

• Sharing a vision and demonstrating genuine commitment and outcomes often attracts like-minded financial supporters.
• Leverage means tapping into someone else’s knowledge, experience, and resources, allowing us to utilize their strengths to address our own gaps.
• Collaborations create more meaningful impact, often reaching further.

It all come down to impact 

Understanding how to effectively communicate our vision, the impact we are creating is far and wide. Our university students become inspirational role models for over 20,000 rural students in Cambodia every year, leading and managing our educational social enterprise Projects.

All our projects are co-funded by corporate partners, enabling them and their team members to actively join us in creating sustainable impact. We love these collaborations – they amplify our vision and create more meaningful impact; they allow us to leverage others’ strengths to fill our own gaps.

We also consistently communicate our social contributions and sustainable impact to our supporters and the broader community. This openness often inspires additional collaborations with like-minded individuals and organizations, further enhancing our ripple effect across society.

Vision, commitment and money – the three critical ingredients needed for any organization to get started. Then comes the rest … 

Written by Aviv Palti.

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