of planning for action there is always considerable time and energy devoted to refining this dream into a clear and distinct set of possibilities; a vision.
If you have a drivers licence you may be a car enthusiast. If so, your vision of you as a driver most probably started before primary school. Most boys dream of driving a car long before they are old enough to own one. They may start with a toy car or tricycle and graduate to a go-kart. I still recall the very first time I was able to slip into the driver’s seat of a car and turn the wheel while I pumped away at the pedals.
There was no risk of me setting this car in motion, as it was without wheels (and possibly an engine) in my Uncle’s back yard. I can still recall the smell of leather and the shine of the chrome strip across the top of the dash that joined the glove box to the single dial on the driver’s side. For that brief moment, I was in charge and I could go anywhere…
A business vision is a seductive image of an ideal future, one that is seen clearly enough to be articulated in a form which will provide inspiration and motivation to all those who are willing to share it and accompany the leader on the journey towards attaining it. Every great person and business that started with a vision has provided real excitement and passion because their vision represented a ‘destination’; it establishes clearly, where they were headed by answering the question ‘where are we going?’
Steve Jobs revealed his vision of technology’s future to Inc. Magazine in 1989 (after famously being fired from his own company in 1985) in an interview. He spoke about “the big insight”, as he called it, that he and others had had in the 1970’s regarding the importance of putting computers into the possession of regular folk. He believed in the enormous creative capacity of individuals - if given the right tools. He proposed, “a thousand people with microcomputers will always outperform one person with a supercomputer” and that “because people are inherently creative, they will use tools in ways the toolmakers never thought possible, and then they will share what they’ve learned”. This revealed an extraordinarily accurate vision of the future for personal computing.
In 1997, the year when Jobs returned to Apple, at the World Developers Conference he said “We’ve tried to come up with a strategy and vision for Apple—it started with: ‘What incredible benefits can we give the customer?’ and did not start with: ‘Let’s sit down with the engineers, and figure out what awesome technology we have and then figure out how to market that.’” Going right back to the 1970’s, and 80’s Steve Jobs has had a rich vision for the future which has actually shaped what is now the present, where individuals enjoy the benefits of tools which Apple pioneered. Jobs always had a strong response to the ‘where are we going?’ question and there are thousands of followers who would love to have the opportunity to work with him and share his vision of the future.
For organizations like Steve Job’s Apple, having a vision and communicating it to the team provides the focus, energy, enthusiasm and commitment to get things done; the right things. Because it is necessary, firstly to have a clear vision of the desired destination before it is possible to plot a course to get there. Far too many organisations undertake the challenge of developing strategy and planning before they have crystallized their vision. ‘What exactly are we looking to achieve?’ The answer to this central question will go a long way to determining ‘how’ to go about the work necessary to getting there.
Taking off on a journey without a precise understanding of where you are going is a futile exercise; like getting in your car and just ‘driving’ without knowing where you are going, you will waste valuable time and fuel, and worse still you will likely become deflated for your lack of a satisfying outcome. This analogy may sound a little silly but this is exactly what many business owners do when embarking on what is one of the most serious and significant endeavours in their life: running a business.
However, having a vision is not just the domain of world changers like Steve Jobs and Apple. Everyone is business needs a vision to fuel the fires of direction and activity. Even if only a relatively small concern, having a vision in business usually determines the difference between measured success and mediocrity.
A friend of mine in Bunbury, Western Australia, has a cleaning business and her vision when starting out, was to have it run under management providing her with a specific income and freeing her time to do other things. Having that focus on a vision which is meaningful to her has allowed her to achieve it within record time and now she holds the privileged position of being able to spend her time how she wants and can expand the vision to even greater heights.
A Harvard university study concluded that we need vision for three main reasons:
To clearly perceive what is possible: To focus on a vision is to consider the possibilities and to reach for an inspired future. Once the desired possibility is perceived, recognising the details allows for the formation of a clear vision, which will in turn allow for the development of strategy and goals.
To overcome the drift effect: With vision comes purpose; without a vision we lack purpose and we tend to drift aimlessly. Vision is critical to overcome this ‘drift effect’.
Because having a vision is the key to creating effective change: To effect positive change in any field it is necessary to focus on the ‘desired outcome’; the clearer the vision of the person or the business, the greater the success that entity will experience.
If you do not have a vision for your business, you are on a journey without a destination akin to a rudderless ship and you will wander aimlessly looking for answers only to return to what you already know. I remember an old saying that goes something like: ‘when you not aiming at anything you hit nothing a hundred percent of the time’. Having a clear vision is the first step towards being able to identify the targets you are ‘shooting at’.
Many business owners are so short-sighted because their focus is on doing ‘urgent’ things and as a result, they can hardly see past tomorrow.
Urgent versus Important
We have seen so many businesses which simply do not have a clear vision and it is a prime contributor to their eventual and inevitable struggles. Many people who have come from having a job (even those from lofty corporate positions) to driving the wheels of entrepreneurialism fail to recognise the importance of clearly defining their vision and then fall prey to the ‘urgent’ things at the expense of the ‘important’ things.
When you really look, the urgent things are rarely the important things and the important things are often not urgent. The seemingly urgent things such as emails, phone calls, customer needs, and administration can all be streamlined or delegated. However, the important things like dedicating time to refining your vision and building strategy to define how to achieve the vision will never be done if you do not make them priority and schedule time for them; time, that is uninterrupted and non-negotiable. When all said and done there is nothing more important than having a clear vision so allocate time to building and maintaining it.
When you think of ‘visionary’ people, it is natural to conjure up images of great folk such as Bill Gates, revolutionising the significance of the personal computer, or Henry Ford, who envisioned a world where everyone would want one of those newfangled mechanical buggies (and people though he was insane!), or Richard Branson, who continues to extend the Virgin brand across countless industries. However, ‘vision’ belongs to us all. We were all designed to create our own possibilities and ‘business’ provides the ultimate platform to achieve our dreams.
The people referred to above are well known for building an organisation around their vision, which provided the driving force for the business to flourish and prosper. They all dedicated significant time and energy to conjuring a detailed vision which
