Why Visions Matter

IT ALL STARTS WITH A VISION!

Whether you’re a CEO, a founder of a startup, a product manager, or a mother of two, you should have a vision! A vision is a stake in the ground, it sets your direction, keeps you aligned, and gets you into action. I love this saying “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll likely end up somewhere else.” To me, this speaks of how aimlessly, people wander on about life; bouncing from one thing to the other, without CONSCIOUSLY CREATING their lives!

Do you feel like you are walking through your life in the dark? That you have no clear vision or direction and that you are just going around in circles? Do you feel like you are not getting anywhere, or not really knowing what you’re doing – perhaps experiencing ‘imposter syndrome’? If so, you are not alone.

Consciously creating a vision can help. If you need direction, there are many ways to set a vision for your life and your work. Now more than EVER, having a vision down at the team level is critical. With working at home and via video conference meetings, leaders need something that the team can all align too, have goals delivered on, and help keep them focused.

It is critical to have a well defined vision, as work is now focused on delivering outcomes, rather than spending endless hours working on tasks. As leaders and managers, you cannot confirm what your teams are doing, while you’re all working from home; however, if they are DELIVERING OUTCOMES – should it matter what they do each hour?

Vision is the way to align, define goals, get authentic buy in and deliver outcomes in a virtual world!

VISIONS ARE CRITICAL

Now more than EVER, having a vision down to the team level is critical. With working at home and via video conference meetings, leaders need something that the team can all align to, have goals delivered on, and help keep them focus. It is critical to have a well defined vision, as the work is now focused on delivering outcomes, rather than hours working on something.

As leaders and managers, you cannot confirm what your teams are doing while you’re all working from home.

However, if they are DELIVERING OUTCOMES, does it matter what they do hour by hour?

Vision is the way to align, define goals, get authentic buy in and deliver outcomes in a virtual world!!

A vision is the touchstone for change. If you are facing change as an organization or a team, define what that future state could look like – as then you have a stake in the ground and a direction. You can always change and course correct as you learn more about what you didn’t know in the first place!

Visions inspire passion, motivation, action! A powerful vision pulls in ideas, people and other resources. It creates the energy and desire to make change happen. It inspires individuals and organizations to commit, to persist, and to give their best.

Visions bring stakeholders together. Visions give direction and create alignment. A vision helps keep organizations and teams focused and together, especially with complex projects and in stressful times.

You can refer back to the visions and check in on why you are doing whatever it is you’re focused on, get reconnected to your purpose, check to see if your new idea, FITS with the vision, or falls outside of it.

VISIONS SHOULD…

Be clear—so sharp and so detailed that you can see, smell and taste the smallest details.

Be positive. Focus on the outcomes or change your vision will create – the positive impacts. Do acknowledge the difficulties, but don’t try to motivate yourself or others with a vision of bad things that might happen if you don’t succeed. A vision based on fear may help fuel immediate action, but it can also limit your results to damage control rather than getting to positive change.

Be big enough. Create a big picture of the effects of your work then just solving the problem at hand. A vision that’s too small may not provide enough inspiration, or generate enough energy, to get you past the tough spots. It might even close your mind to what you could achieve.

Include changes in attitudes. The challenge you see in front of you is only the part of the problem that you can see—the rest of the challenge is deeper and often involves personal attitudes that may be strongly held. We call those limiting beliefs! Include a clear picture of your personal role, not just that of your organization, if you’re in one. This isn’t about ego. It’s about you taking full responsibility for helping achieve the results you want.

Visions outline the steps to get you to the end goal/future. A vision is a practical guide for creating plans, setting goals and objectives, making decisions, and coordinating and evaluating the work on any project, large or small.

Visions, create ownership through participation. Visions get people into action because they define the goals which can be measured and deliver the vision, so there is buy in.

It’s a roadmap between your present and your future. It helps you and your team come up with an operating plan, milestones, goals, dates, and thresholds.

Come from the heart, not the head. Don’t try to think your way to a vision. To create a vision that’s exciting and compelling, you’ve got to give yourself the freedom to dream—to use your imagination to see and feel what does not yet exist. A vision is not the same as goals or objectives; those come from the head. A vision comes from the heart and elicits emotions!

As leaders, it’s imperative that you set direction, remove barriers and provide resources for your team and defining your vision enables you to satisfy that first leadership imperative: setting direction.

Learning how to create and communicate a vision is useful whether you’re starting a project on your own, you’re joining a team already organized around a project, or you’re a new leader on a team.

• Old Negative Messages obscure the vision, e.g., “we don’t have the money for this”.
• Limiting Beliefs and Attitudes.
• Omitting first “setup” steps; context & safety.
• Only using left brain visioning exercises, e.g.,
• data/analytical models
• Not embracing your passion, your heart.

Identifying your team or organization’s vision is difficult, for so many reasons, some of which we have listed below, but there are many more reasons.

It’s always wise to use a skilled facilitator. It’s virtually impossible to facilitate the sessions and participate in it at the same time. You may be asking: how long will the process take? In most cases, with proper preparation on everyone’s part, it can be effectively accomplished in two immersive days.

VISIONS ARE DIFFICULT

Once you complete this process, you should immediately cascade the results throughout the organization. The power of your mission, vision and values comes from a shared understanding and commitment, which, in turn, helps to forge alignment of purpose, action and results.

Having a vision provides a sense of purpose and direction for the business. Your vision will help you define your short and long-term goals, and guide the decisions you make along the way. “A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved.

They inspire the power and energy to get it done.”

At Transformative Visions, we facilitate these sessions for clients on a regular basis through our program called Transformative Visions ProgramTM, we also have an upcoming online course version, so stay tuned for that! Subscribe here for regular articles and to find out more about our upcoming programs!

Once you complete this process, you should immediately cascade the results throughout the organization. The power of your mission, vision and values comes from a shared understanding and commitment, which, in turn, helps to forge alignment of purpose, action and results.

Having a vision provides a sense of purpose and direction for the business. Your vision will help you define your short and long-term goals, and guide the decisions you make along the way. “A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. They inspire the power and energy to get it done.”

At Transformative Visions, we facilitate these sessions for clients on a regular basis through our program called Transformative Visions ProgramTM, we also have an upcoming online course version, so stay tuned for that! Subscribe here for regular articles and to find out more about our upcoming programs!