1. What was proposed

Weekly recitals of the company vision, as a way to keep a team out of the build trap.

2. What killed it

Killed by analysis. Reciting a vision tests whether people remember the goal. The build trap looks like a different failure, where the measure replaces the goal (editor's framing; the study below is about incentive pay, not product teams).

That failure has a name, surrogation: managers "act as though the measures are the construct of interest". In two experiments, paying managers on a measure made surrogation worse, especially with a single measure (Choi, Hecht & Tayler, The Accounting Review, 2012).

The nearest evidence for mission statements is a survey of 83 large Canadian and US organisations: commitment to the mission, and aligning internal structure, policies and procedures with it, were associated with employee behaviour (Bart, Bontis & Taggar, Management Decision, 2001). That is a correlation, not a test of reciting a vision.

No controlled study of weekly vision recitals was found.

3. Status

Killed by analysis, pending review. Date: set when the reviewer signs. Read with page 5, "The build trap is surrogation, not forgetting".

4. Open gaps

• If a controlled study of vision recitals turns up, this page is reopened.