The Vision and Impact distinction

The Vision Story and the Impact Story look almost identical on the page: both feature a specific person whose situation has changed. But they do completely different jobs, and confusing them weakens both.

Imagine, versus acknowledge

One is projection. The other is recognition. The tense is the test: if it has not happened yet, it is Vision; if it has, it is Impact.

Why you need both

And you need both, working together. A company with only a Vision Story is asking its audience to keep believing in a future that has not arrived. A company with only an Impact Story is showing movement with no direction, evidence that something happened but no sense of where it leads. Put them together and they say the thing every investor and every customer most wants to hear: this is where we are going, and here is proof we are already moving toward it. The Vision sets the direction. The Impact proves the engine is running.

Now let me show you the Impact Story on someone you know well by now.