Where you look matters. Empower your core business with a compelling vision of what success will look and feel like – and then anchor your vision in a detailed roadmap to your future.
Envisioning a thriving future is the first step to achieving it - envisioning how you will get there is the second step. A long-term vision— accompanied by annual checkpoints— can drive system-wide improvements, spark healthier actions, increase employee vigor, and provide an often-needed sense of over-arching purpose.
As you are envisioning your future, try these five best practices:
Tip 1: When thinking of the future, release inhibitions.
Everyday worries can make generating a long-term vision challenging. When you think of the future, do your best to not get bogged down with the present -- you need to understand where you truly want to be in order to pave a road to get there.
Tip 2: Be audacious with your goals.
What is your best possible outcome? Life favors the bold, so set you sights high — then, identify what business elements need to change in order to reach them. How far out should your goals be? Try five years, and then ten. Ten year goals are powerful because a lot of meaningful change can happen over the course of a decade.
Tip 3: Time travel. Look back. Tell a story.
Now that you’ve settled on your future success, do a bit of time travel. Do what? Pretend to travel forward 10 years, look around, and realize that all of your goals have been achieved – yes, every single one of them!
Looking at your future, ask yourself and your team: “How did we do that? What was our path? What did we do right? What improvements did we make? How did we adjust our culture, our products, and our market position? How did we pull this off?"
And then begin to piece together the story of the amazing journey your firm took.
Tip 4: Write down the key quantitative and qualitative milestones.
Once you’ve got your vision and how-we-got-here story, write down the key milestones along the way. Year by year, what happened? What changed? Strive to look over the arc of your journey to your desired future. When you run into mysteries in the story – and there will be more than a few of them – you can write down, “I can’t tell you right now how we accomplished this, but we did!” It’s best to simply admit that right now you don’t know all the “how’s,” but mark the victories and keep going.
Tip 5: Pinpoint necessary business changes, and take concrete steps toward them.
One thing we know is that what drives success in your future will be different than today. Change will happen – hurray! Get clear on changes in beliefs, practices, and systems you can make now, and then pick up speed towards your terrific empowered vision.
Want an envisioning boost? Get some new ideas and insights today by requesting our free growth audit. You might find a few minutes today could speed you up a few years later on.
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