I can perhaps overlook that oversimplification.
But most organizations “believe” many things. Concurrence of employee/vendor teams, if it could be measured, would surely cut across many beliefs and ideas. It would be difficult to prove that what motivates people is a directly causative to success of a given enterprise. Being motivated can lead to good as well as bad results. There are good and bad, successful and unsuccessful visions that can be communicated (or mis-communicated) to prospective cult members. Many a startup with great vision, collective commitment, and focus on “why,” not just “what” — will fail to make the cut.
Inspirational, powerful rhetoric is great (and its absence is painful), but show me what Simek in his talk disparagingly refers to as “the 12 point plan,” too. A core principle in understanding how people operate, I believe, is the notion that knowledge, and the pursuit of it in an enterprise, is intersubjective. That means, at some level, distrusting not only the expressed beliefs of others, but one’s own instincts to believe.
Maybe Simek it simply reiterating what Bush the Elder was said to have commented about “the vision thing.” Give it its due, but no more.