Vision is the glue that binds your business together. Its what keeps all its component parts in alignment. It’s your compass, your GPS, your roadmap; guiding your thinking, influencing your decisions. At each point in your business’s journey, it serves as a reference point to ensure that you’re on track.
A coworker of mine once made a great analogy. He said that running a business without a clearly defined vision is like handing your employees a 1000-piece puzzle, dumping it on the table, asking them to assemble it, but hiding the picture on the box. Talk about impossible. Without that •gpicture•h-that structure to guide their actions-your employees are lost. And so are you. Because if you don’t know where you’re going, how are you ever going to get there or anywhere worthwhile for that matter?
No successful business got where it is today without vision. And, you can be sure that no successful entrepreneur envisioned a company with bad customer service, shoddy equipment, bad lighting, snotty trainers, etc. Why then are so many businesses so unsatisfactory? Because, their owners never had a dream, a vision, a purpose that they made important.
So, what’s your purpose? Why are you in business? Every business’s primary purpose is to serve its owner’s life objectives. Therefore, understanding your purpose-what’s important to you-will help you define a meaningful purpose for your business. A few things to consider are: what you do and don’t want in your life, what your priorities are, what your personal objectives are, and what barriers and limitations are standing in the way of those priorities and objectives.
Once you’re clear about what you want from your life, you can begin to think about how your business will serve those goals. You can begin to craft your dream, your vision for what your business will be like when it’s finished being developed.
So, what is your dream? If you could start over and build your business from the ground up, what would it be like? Here are some basic things to consider when crafting your vision:
1. What products and services would you like to offer?
2. What size business would you like (sales, profits, number of employees, number of locations)?
3. What is the ideal geographic scope (location) of your business?
4. What markets would you like to serve (what kinds of customers)?
5. By when do you want to achieve/ realize your vision for your business (in 3 years, 5 years, 10 years)?
6. What will your competitive advantage be (price, quality, customer service, etc.)?
Once your vision is developed, you need to communicate it to your people. In order for your people to be exemplars of that vision, they need to understand it, embrace it, believe in it. A good way to start is to draft your company story. Your company story is a document, a tool, that communicates the spirit of your business•cto your employees, to your clients and, ultimately, to the world at large. It is a compelling description of the •gbig idea•h behind your business. By capturing the inspiration behind your business in words, you can rally your employees to serve that purpose in your business; you can successfully make your vision part of your company’s culture.
When writing your company story, think about:
1. What is the spirit of your business (describe its defining moments)?
2. What is the best that your business has to offer (best customer experience, best employee experience, etc.)?
3. What prompted you to start your business? What was your state of mind?
4. What, historically, has your business’s journey been like-from its start to present?
The real difficulty in communicating and implementing your vision is lack of clarity. If you can start thinking about your vision, your purpose, and can merge these concepts into a compelling company story, you are well on your way to being a consistent, determined and passionate leader. Once you’ve documented your vision, you have a powerful vehicle with which you can proclaim it to every corner of your business.
Next month, we will discuss how to learn to build a franchise prototype-a truly turnkey operation. You will learn how the best entrepreneurs in the world think about business, and how to bring the entrepreneurial spirit to your business.
Hillary Gerber is Senior Editor at E-Myth Worldwide. She can be contacted at 800.221.0266, or by email at hgerber@e-myth.com.
