“A compelling description of a preferred alternative future” is, in my experience, a really useful concept. It corresponds well to what many people refer to as “vision” but is more precise.
The “compelling description” gets to the heart, mind and gut of the intended audience. It describes something clearly but also makes it attractive – so attractive that people want to align and join into making it real. And a truly compelling vision has objective completion criteria (see Conditions of Satisfaction) – you would be able to tell if it had been achieved.
The “preferred alternative future” makes it explicit that the future could work out in different ways and we are not indifferent to the outcome. We have preferences and these preferences matter.
There is also the implication that by some levers of control exercised through business initiatives, we could bring this preferred future into reality.
It is more than just predicting or expecting particular things to happen – there is the implication of anticipating (action in advance of) to be part of the creative act of driving the preferred future.
The most famous example is JFK to get a man on the moon and safely home before the end of the decade.
A vision is often time-bound (like JFK’s) but some can be more open ended yet still visionary. An example here would be Martin Luther King – “I have a dream” speech. Clearly setting out a preferred alternative future, and no less compelling for the lack of a specific date). There is no universal ‘optimal timescale’. The important thing is to be compelling. For some contexts no timescale is necessary. For some something too far in the future cannot be made sufficiently compelling and something nearer-term is needed to capture the imagination.
Vision in this form often relates to achievement of some endeavour (landing on moon) or achieving some target performance against an axis of goodness but it may relate to any beneficial outcome.