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Can You See the Vision?
The word ‘vision’ is part of our contemporary business language, yet not
every business owner can readily articulate just what their vision for
the business is.
It’s not just a marketing plan, although these plans have to be based on
an appreciation of a vision for the business. The irony is that a vision
is something that never exists in the physical sense – it simply can’t
be seen with the eyes.
A vision is a product of the imagination. It can be reduced to writing
but that’s only a summary of something much more vital.
One way of defining vision is:
“What the business will be in three years’ time”. It’s obviously
not a part of the here and now but rather something that is going to
happen in the future. Here are
the elements of the vision for a business:
• What the business will be like at a designated time in the future
• What the structure of the business will be at that point in time
• What the culture of the business will be at that point in time
• What forces will make it be like that
• What the drivers for those forces are (or will be)
How important is it for a business to have a vision? Absolutely
essential! A business is unlikely to grow unless it knows what it wants
to be and how it’s going to get that way. And without growth, in this
fast-moving competitive era a business will actually be going backwards.
It’s a real shame that so many business owners and their senior managers
don’t seem capable of looking ahead - to see what might be, rather than
only what exists right now. That attitude only ensures that things will
happen by accident, and those aren’t necessarily going to be good
things.
So what is it that can create a vision and enable SME proprietors to
conceptualize a future for their enterprises? There are at least three
‘drivers’ that do this.
An Investment of Energy
Visions are created only after a significant investment of energy. It
takes energy to do the research, the thinking and to spend the many
hours of hard work to articulate the vision for a business.
An Accumulation of knowledge
A vision isn’t created in isolation. The creator of a vision has to know
about the market, the principles of business and how to run one, human
behavior, leadership, finance and a host of other things that need to be
learned.
It’s only the background knowledge that enables a visionary to construct
a future out of the past and present.
The Power of Thought
The human mind is an amazing and powerful thing. It is the engine that
creates the vision, the intellectual tool that enables a person to
consider a vast body of knowledge and sort out what can and should be
from that which is impossible or unwanted.
A vision is a prediction of the future and can only be produced by
thought. The mind can create many possibilities but only one can be
chosen to be the vision towards which the business is launched.
Just having a vision isn’t enough to make it happen. Once created the
vision must be achieved by the use of resources, and one of the most
powerful resources integral to achieving a vision is the team in the
business.
To be truly effective a vision must be shared with and accepted by the
members of the team. It must be clearly communicated and become part of
the culture of the business. Unless this is accomplished it’s not likely
to be realized.
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