Creating a Vision for your Business
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The Business Vision should stretch the business's capabilities and image of itself. It needs to resonate with all members of the organization and motivate them. A good Business Vision helps people feel proud, excited, and part of something much bigger than themselves.
A key to success when developing your Business Vision is to make your company's vision precise enough so that you can use it as a yardstick to validate goals, strategies, and tactics and to measure your current reality and your progress. We always recommend having as many stakeholders as possible present when creating the company vision. After all, the vision needs to inspire everybody to work towards the company's common goals. For larger groups, we recommend creating the vision as part of a strategic plan.
The stakes are high! It's because your business has so much at stake that we have found it very helpful to our clients to lead them through a rigorous preparation phase to ensure an open and productive flow of ideas. Especially since the danger for larger groups is that uninspired stakeholders will restrict customer satisfaction and significantly impact the growth potential for your company.
When you create your Business Vision, you want to make sure it reflects your personal values, too. Therefore, the first step in preparing your Business Vision is first to review your Personal Vision. Next, do the following brief exercise to begin defining your Business Vision.
Exercise:
Picture yourself operating your business in 2015. Can you answer the following questions? (Remember, any vision that is only about you will not inspire others to join you in reaching your business's goals, and it won't inspire them to create visions of their own, either. So think about how you will inspire others.)
- What will your organization look like?
- How will you define success?
- How will the company satisfy your customers' needs?
- What niche will it serve and what is your position in that niche?
- How will others (customers, suppliers, community) see your business?
- For what accomplishments will the business be recognized?
- How will your employees interact with one other?
- What are your expectations concerning your involvement and income levels?
- What will your business's key values be?
- What will be working great in your business?
Jot down your answers in a rough draft, and then check them against your Personal Vision. Are your answers to these questions aligned with your Personal Vision? If, yes, great! If not, you need to go back and revisit your answers and re-write your draft until they are aligned with your personal values. If your business doesn't support what you, as the owner, desire, you may not be satisfied with the results you get.
Always write out your vision statements in the first person to describe every aspect of your business, and be very clear and assumptive about what you want for your business. For example, "We will receive the #1 supplier award from our five largest customers" rather than, "We hope to become the #1 supplier of our five largest customers." Remember, we get what we expect.
Now, look at your personal values and the values for your organization. Effective organizations have a clear, concise and shared meaning of values and beliefs, which translate into priorities and direction that everyone can follow.
For example, if one of your values is excellence in customer service, everybody needs to approach customers from the angle that "Our customers are the experts, and we can learn from them" rather than "Our customers are like children, and we need to teach them everything". Do you see the difference this will make in talking to a customer? Once defined, values impact every aspect of your organization.
After you have established your business's values, you must support and nurture these values. People will feel fooled and misled unless they see you living them yourself and holding them accountable to them. Verify that
- People demonstrate the business's values in their personal work behaviors, decision-making, contribution, and interpersonal behavior.
- The business's values guide every decision that is made
- Rewards and recognition within the organization are structured to recognize those people whose work embodies these values.
- Values are part of the performance feedback.
The final step is to create your mission or purpose statement. This is a precise description of what your organization does. It should describe what type of business your organization is in. Your business's mission statement is a definition of "why" the organization exists currently and what the values of the organization are. Every member of your organization should be able to verbally express this mission.
Before you finalize your Business Vision and your business's Mission Statement, be sure to run them by some of your business partners and advisors. Ask them if you are creating possibilities as well as a good yardstick?
The key for you as the leader is to passionately own the company vision, sell it to everybody in the business and then relentlessly pursue that vision. This is what leadership is all about, and it is one of the high leverage activities you need to pursue to grow your business.
In the next and final article in this series we will focus on goals setting to grow your business.
© 2009 Copyrighted by Dr. Joe Mayer, Managing Partner of The Growth Coach, who helps business owners, professionals and their key employees to grow their businesses by focusing on vision and strategy. Joe can be reached at J.Mayer@Thegrowthcoach.com; http://www.mayerbusinessgroup.com/
