Why did you choose what you chose to do as a business is a million-dollar question that many business owners don’t know and find difficult to answer. By default, most choose what he/she is qualified to do or have good knowledge about as their business. An expert coder, confident, and good at problem-solving chooses to do just that to earn his/her bread. One good at woodworking, I presume, would open-up a carpentry workshop for a living. In most cases, the vision for their business would be “to deliver world-class wood craftsmanship to the world” or “to offer quick and best digital solutions” or something of that sort. Little does the Carpenter or the developer knows that this short-sighted vision only leads to loss of purpose and direction in the short run.
Vision Statements are meant to be exactly what it means – “visionary” – by nature. It must act as the guiding light to an organization that points to an unattainable destination in the far reaches of destiny. A compass that enterprises can use to navigate towards a frontier in the far and the beyond. It is an expression of the yearnings of the founding fathers of the enterprise to achieve the impossible. An idea along which the very establishment moves. The thread that connects the origins and destiny.
The problem is, in most cases, by the time a business thinks of its vision they are already churning out products/services and so this exercise becomes a retrofitting activity leading to absurdities such as a vision to offer a service of a higher quality or manufacture a product beyond compare. In truth, those are not a vision but short-lived goals. In fact, the products and services a business offers are nothing but vehicles by which they attempt to fulfill their vision for the business. Tomorrow these very offerings can reshape or change yet, they remain as another step in the journey of the business to achieve its vision. The danger of setting up an achievable goal as a vision lies in the fact that the company would lose its purpose when achieving it.
So, how do you write a vision statement that lasts? Firstly, engage in this process at an early stage of the business lifecycle. Your vision for the company lies in the deepest depths of your consciousness. You only need to ask yourself repeatedly ‘Why you do what you do?’ as you delve deeper and deeper, peeling away layers of the obvious and specifics. Dig deeper until you reach a singular thought that is bare minimum at best – an unbreakable atom of abstraction of purpose – which perhaps is your mission – the concept behind your business and a reference point to align and realign your business goals and activities in time.
The characteristics of a Vision are that it is generic allowing for multiple interpretations and possibilities. It is simplistic in thought and is devoid of references to Markets, Products, Processes, Services, Money value, and such materialism. Instead, they should focus on creating human emotions and experiences for the greater good of mankind.
Think about it, after all, IKEA didn’t set out to sell cheap furniture – but to ’create a better everyday life’ and Apple’s vision was not to create iPads and laptops but to create ‘Great Products’
These are the thoughts and approaches I carry while interviewing clients to develop a Vision for their business. This of course is not the only way, everyone has their own. Feel free to share yours with the world?