Executive Summary Vision is the essence of leadership that brings about change in the life of organizations. present paper argues that three critical components, the qualities of an organization's leader, the attributes of the followers and the nature of the environment must be taken into consideration by the leader in articulating an organizational vision. paper offers classification of organizational visions and discusses some likely consequences of disregarding them. Some examples are drawn from educational settings. Implications and conclusions about the gains and losses that leaders with different operational orientations may face when articulating are also discussed. ********** There is no more powerful engine driving an organization toward excellence and long-range success than an attractive worthwhile, and achievable of the future, widely shared. (Nanus 1992) Vision is one of the key elements of effective leadership in organizational settings. As indicated by Bennis and Nanus (1985), lack of clear is major cause of the declining effectiveness of many organizations in recent years. This assertion is shared by many scholars (e.g., Peters & Waterman, 1982; Terry, 1993) who have argued for the importance of organizational and, as such, for the need to update visions periodically because of on-going changes that are taking place in an ever-evolving environment. Organizations should follow the direction set forth in the and, because the serves as compass to the organization's members, it must not only be defined in general terms and be inspirational, but must also accurately reflect the internal qualities of the organization and its interactions with the environment. Because of its great importance, has been studied by scholars from both educational settings (e.g., Bell & Harrison, 1995; Holmes, 1993; Sergiovanni, 1990, 1996) and non-educational ones (e.g., Nanus, 1992; Terry, 1993; Yukl, 1994). Sergiovanni (1990) argues, that vision gets the most attention in the leadership literature (p. 57) because it has been credited for the success of organizational leadership on the one hand, and blamed for organizational leadership failure, on the other. Since is essential for organizational effectiveness and is used as major leadership tool, its articulation requires sufficient degree of clarity. Conceptualizing vision: as A has been conceived variously as just dream, and at other times ... as concrete as written mission statement (Yukl, 1994, p. 363), a thing of imagination (Bell & Harrisonn 1995, p. 2), or as mental image (Holmes, 1993, p. 16). These notions portray somewhat unrealistic and intangible view of the concept. Practically speaking, vision, in organizational settings, is concrete idea that describes what needs to be achieved by the organization's members and how this should be done (Creemers, 1997). Therefore, that mainly reflects vague dreams or thing(s) of imagination may be detached from reality. Conger, Kanungo and Associates (1989) discuss the notion of discrepancy between the goal (the vision) that the leader aspires for the organization to achieve and the status (the circumstances): The more idealized or utopian the future goal advocated by the leader, the more discrepant it becomes in relation to the status quo (p. 85). From their point of view, the qualities of are determined by the magnitude of the discrepancy between the future goal and the present circumstances: the greater the discrepancy, the greater the probability that the is exceptional and not ordinary. Trethowan (1991) elaborates on the analogy of as dream. He argues that only that is an informed dream can be beneficial to an organization. Such takes into consideration what both the members of the organization and its customers think and understand of it and the situation in which it is to be realized. …