‘Vision – the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom.’
Historically, great leaders are those with vision. They have the ability to elevate themselves above the chaos and noise that is everyday business life, let’s call it the dance floor, to the quietness of the balcony above enabling them to think and see clearly.
There are many challenges facing business owners and executives right now preventing them from having vision, connecting with their vision or both. Given it’s one of the most powerful tools for business success this is one thing that leaders need to disrupt their thinking on and make some changes.
By having a strong vision that you are connected to enables you to:
- Understand your WHY. The reason you are doing what you do. When you have an understanding of your why, momentum and execution follow. When you know your why you can influence, empower and innovate. Success is created.
- Have passion. You’ve heard all the stories but when people love what they do the sacrifice, hard work and discipline is just that much easier. The passionate person is like a magnet and it makes the hard stuff a little easier! Knowing your why gives you that passion.
- Create goals. Not just create a goal for the sake of having a goal but meaningful goals that are right for you and your business.
- It keeps you on track to achieve your dream. Let’s face it, we all had a dream when we started business or for your career. For some this has turned into a nightmare commonly called a job for business owners and stagnation for career people. Time to reconnect with that dream!
In the book “The Idea-Driven Organisation” authors Robinson & Schroeder ask the question ‘Given that organisations have achieved extraordinary results by tapping into the ideas of their front-line people, why aren’t leaders around the world falling over themselves to do the same thing?’
Good question! When business or business people are unclear on their direction how can they identify what is really wrong and what is needed for improvement? When they are lost ‘in’ the business and on the ‘dance floor’ how can they identify best practice? When they are continually running around putting out fires, being reactive and feel completely depleted of energy, who has the strength to realign?
Vision is something that is often sacrificed due to time constraints, cashflow concerns and yet it’s the key thing that is going to provide the source of motivation and meaning for business leaders and their teams to build momentum and inject some well needed energy in to our business lives to create better results.
Our employees and clients are screaming for vision. They need meaning. They need to understand how they navigate through the chaos and have a light focused on the journey. Just as you do. Shine the light.