“In the presence of greatness, pettiness disappears. In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails.” – Peter M. Senge
What do you want your organization to be? When you ask leaders that questions, you get a lot of standard answers. Better, bigger, more profitable, etc. The problem with those kinds of answers is they’re really vague.
What do you mean by better? More efficient? More effective use of technology? What should be bigger? Sales? Output? Number of employees? Geographic area? How much more profitable? One dollar? One million dollars?
Most leaders don’t do a good job of clearly stating the target. They come up with some fuzzy answers that are hard to pin down and hard to be accountable for. Whether it’s truly a lack of vision, or whether it’s fear of putting that vision out there, the truth is that most organizations lack a shared idea of what they want to be.
Think about the organization or group that you lead. Does that organization or group of people understand what they’re shooting for? Do they understand what you as the leader and what they as team members are trying to accomplish?
Developing a clear vision isn’t easy for most people. We think of vision as something that just comes to us if we meditate enough, or something that only creative people can come up with. Maybe that’s the case for some people, but not for most.
Break your vision into pieces. Think about finance. What specifically do you want in terms of sales and profits? Think about markets. Who specifically are you trying to serve with your products or services? Think about your people. What do they need to be great at for us to succeed?
There are more pieces, but that’s the idea. Break your organization into parts and think about what each of them needs to be for the organization to be wildly successful. Once you understand that, start thinking about how you can make that happen.
Don’t get overwhelmed. No truly great thing is built overnight. But no truly great thing is built without a clear vision either. So start painting the picture.
