Leaders lead. So why do so many brand leaders outsource their most important role, brand vision, to third-party agencies? From the C-suite to the boardroom, brands have become fixated on next quarter’s results rather than cultural impact.

To change dashboards, you need data. But to change a culture, you need vision.

In a society where culture is intertwined with commerce (like ours), cultural homogeneity has become the norm. Why? Because brand vision is misguided, and in some, more extreme cases, it is completely nonexistent. And that’s because most brand executives are buried under the weight of responsibility.

Every quarter brings a fresh stack of demands. Evolving consumer behavior refuses to stabilize as platform rulebooks rewrite themselves overnight. And at the end of every reporting period, investor expectations continue to reward speed over substance. There is an incessant pressure to perform, and timelines are more compressed by the accelerated cycles of social media trends and cultural moments.

The result is always the same: leadership teams default to what feels measurable, defensible, and urgent. Short-term goals win. Long-term thinking loses.

Vision: Retail’s Most Dangerous Blind Spot

Vision is the one responsibility no dashboard can capture. It requires asking probing, at times uncomfortable, questions about where the business is today and where it should be one, five, even ten years into the future. 

And we’re in a climate where the uncertainty far outweighs the clarity: 

Cultural velocity is fragmenting meaning.

Social platforms are spawning and cycling through micro aesthetics and fads at breakneck speed. Instagram and TikTok feeds now see niche aesthetics, from “Indie Sleaze” to “Coquette” style, go viral and burn out before they can fully evolve. An online “Aesthetics Wiki” even exists to document these countless micro-trends as they rise and fall, underscoring how cultural trends now churn at algorithm-driven velocity. At the same time, Gen Z is actively rejecting “mainstream culture”, with monocultural moments disintegrating into irrelevance. 

Consumers oscillate between logic and emotion.

Consumers are simultaneously pulling back and indulging (SAPIENS). They’re seeking control while chasing dopamine through “little treats.” This behavior feels contradictory because it is. Brands that rely solely on rational segmentation or emotional storytelling can’t keep up.

We’ve lost our ability to wonder, and thus, foresee the future.

Most organizations have the systems to understand what happened, but few can visualize and articulate what’s next. Foresight requires interpretation and imagination, which are not easily automated and, frankly, require the time and space to wonder. 

Vision offers a stabilizing force that acknowledges emotional complexity without exploiting it.

“Companies are desperate for conviction in a world where dashboards are equal to direction,” said Andrew Smith, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of ThinkUncommon. “I can see why people want this, because it's tough to make decisions when there are so many unknowns that exist in the world. We wish we could have an actual argument; we wish we could get a direction. Everyone has agreed that we have too much data, but we've got rubbish insights, but we have to think differently about how to solve it.” 

CEOs Rarely Own Vision Anymore. Why?

The modern CEO role is structurally at odds with the very idea of being a visionary.

Public markets, private equity timelines, and performance-based compensation models reward predictability, efficiency, and output. CEOs manage risk, deliver returns, and defend decisions with data that points backward or, at maximum, the next quarter ahead. 

Conversely, vision is forward-looking and inherently uncertain (or, as some like to say, squishy). To be visionary, leaders must see around the next corner and do what feels scariest: commit to a direction before the data fully supports it. Visionaries prioritize cultural impact alongside financial return, even when the two don’t neatly align at the moment.

This tension explains why so many organizations default to vision-by-committee, or worse, vision-by-agency.

But culture can’t be governed externally, and meaning can’t be delegated without others feeling a lack of depth, understanding, and substance. 

While a CEO should, indeed, be responsible for running the business, someone needs to be accountable for where the company is going. They not only need to set the charter but also the plan that rallies everyone around the same set of goals, priorities, and opportunities. 

Brands Need Vision, But Do They Need Another C-Suite Role?

There is a clear vision gap in most retail organizations, but is the answer a new C-suite title? The Chief Vision Officer (CVO) is a role that gains traction in industries “where innovation and long-term strategic thinking are critical.” And it is often attributed to two early adopters: Tim Roberts, founder of Broadband Investment Group, positioned the role as superior to that of the CEO and claimed it focused on long-range integration and innovation. Einar Stefferud, co-founder of First Virtual Holdings, used the title in 1994 while navigating the uncharted terrain of early digital commerce.

Both understood that in periods of structural change, execution without vision accelerates decline. On the surface, the CVO role addresses the challenge head-on for brands and retailers. With an executive leader committed to vision and only vision, the problem should solve itself, right? But this is a story we’ve heard before, and the ending leaves plenty to be desired. 

Brands and retail organizations have tried to address the tension between short-term goals and long-term thinking by creating new executive roles focused on what’s next. Chief Innovation Officers. Chief Experience Officers. Chief Digital Officers. Each title arrived with the promise of future-proofing the business by addressing all the cultural, technological, and behavioral shifts the traditional C-suite roles weren’t equipped to handle.

These roles didn’t stop long-term strategy from eroding. They didn’t slow the drift toward homogeneity. And they didn’t meaningfully restore a unified sense of direction within organizations that increasingly felt more reactive and siloed than intentional and aligned.

Why? Because most of these roles were created to solve immediate problems, not to articulate a point of view about the future. In press releases, they were heralded as the driving force for future brand innovation, but in the end, they became just another operator. 

“The rise in Chief Innovation Officers and Chief Digital Officers was us trying to solve a problem the wrong way,” noted Smith. “We are biologically ingrained to try and create order where order doesn't necessarily exist, and the best way to do it is by putting everything into a box, which we physically manifested, literally in hierarchy, because that makes us feel okay. But it’s just an attempt to force a temporary requirement into a permanent system.”

But what brands really need is for someone to own the vision, champion it, and ensure the broader organization embraces it. 

What Vision Actually Requires 

Vision isn’t solely about trend analysis or cultural critique. It’s not speculative slideware presented as foresight or thought leadership. Vision does five things simultaneously:

• Creates a picture for the future of society and commerce, then defines the brand’s role within it.
  
  
• Communicates that future clearly to help teams understand why their work matters so they can carry a sense of purpose.
  
  
• Aligns people emotionally (and operationally) around a shared direction
  
  
• Sets moonshot goals to pull the organization toward big-picture thinking. (And no, these goals don’t always need to be measurable.)
  
  
• Draws inspiration from adjacent and even unlikely sources, not just category peers and direct competitors.
  

This work doesn’t live comfortably inside quarterly planning cycles. It requires abstraction, patience, and the willingness to disappoint stakeholders who mistake restraint for stagnation.

And that’s precisely why vision is so often outsourced or diluted until it’s indistinguishable from a one-dimensional positioning exercise.

The Creative Director: The CVO of the Pre-AI World

Some of the most compelling examples of vision-led leadership haven’t held a C-level title but have played a critical role in shaping an organization's direction. 

A highly influential figure, such as an Artistic or Creative Director at a luxury house, serves as a functional analogue for the CVO but remains distinct from the ultimate head of business operations. Their work is focused on meaning and culture, while the CEO retains the mandate to ensure profitability and stakeholder returns. 

While the creative leader sets the vision the business must follow, the CEO remains committed to the technical and financial execution of that business.

The creative director operates outside the hierarchical-financial mandate that constrains the CEO, allowing them to focus on the long-term, abstract thinking required to see culture as part of the business’s core infrastructure, not as product marketing, an audience, or a means of going viral.

Virgil Abloh was a cultural interpreter for luxury, streetwear, and internet culture at Louis Vuitton and Off-White. His work acknowledged that culture mutated through remix, reference, and reinterpretation. And he showed how to translate trends into valuable moments that still conveyed a brand’s distinct aesthetic and POV.

More recently, Bobby Kim (AKA Bobby Hundreds) was brought into Disney to help reimagine how legacy IP engages youth culture, fandom, and creator-native communities. As Co-Founder for The Hundreds, the LA-based streetwear label, he helped establish a clear story: that what we buy and what we wear are vehicles for community, emotion, and shared belonging. Now, he’s bringing this essence to Disney Consumer Products (DCP) as Global Creative Director. Overseeing a machine that generates $62 billion in sales, Kim is helping keep the magic of Disney’s beloved IP alive and serve its vast consumer base, whether they shop at Walmart, Selfridges, or Gucci.

Both cases illustrate how vision becomes a connective tissue that aligns product, culture, and community. It helps define taste, translate culture, and establish a worldview that the business then supports through its offerings.

Finding Stability in an Uncertain Future

Culture is moving faster, and shared meaning is dissolving. Consumers feel more isolated than ever, despite being constantly connected to culture, commerce, and the world. Brands face not one audience, but thousands of micro-publics, with each demanding recognition without promising loyalty.

In this environment, vision is a requirement for survival. 

But the question every organization must answer isn’t whether they should hire a Chief Vision Officer, but who within the organization can take on the role with gusto. 

Because when no one owns the vision, everyone pays the price.