Is your business plan missing the vision component?A�Below is an explanation of why having a vision is so important to the success of your business plan. In fact, I believe the lack of vision in a plan leads to a demotivating and certainly uninspiring plan.
For you managers: I think helping your agents create an inspiring and motivating plan will remove their reticence at doing a plan.
Why Vision is Important
A few years ago, business professors, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, studied very successful companies to find out the differences between a�?stunninga�� (high profits and highly regarded), and other like companies who were almost as profitable, but not so successful). They published the results in the best business book Ia��ve ever read,A�Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.
What did they find was the common difference between the highly profitable and merely very successful?
A common vision and values shared by every person in the company.A�
Porras and Collins’ conclusion was that the desire for profits isna��t the main driver for profits. The focused and tenacious vision, shared by all in the company, was the biggest determinant for profits.A�
Components of VisionA�
Your vision is made up of yourA�core ideologyA�and yourA�envisioned future.A�A�
As you can see from the chart on the right, excerpted from myA�online business planning resource, Beyond the Basics of Business Planning,A�yourA�core ideologyA�is made up of your core values and core purpose. If you look at your life, youa��ll see that the things that inspire and motivate you are the things that adhere to your belief system. Thata��s what this part of the vision statement says about you.
Your envisioned futureA�is made from a vivid description of this future, and BHAGsa��big hairy, audacious goals. Those are goals five years out, that you really dona��t think you can attain.
The Power of BHAGs
Surprisingly, as Porras and Collins found, when companies stated these goals, they actually attained them in three years! (Inspirational goals that are congruent with your core values and core ideology are powerful motivators!).
What Vision Does for Companies
Herea��s Porras and Collinsa��s function of a vision statement:
Provides guidance about what core to preserve and what future to progress toward.A� Made up of core ideology and envisioned future.
Here’s an example of a vision of one of the book’s stand-out companies:
Our basic principles have endured intact since our founders conceived them.A� We distinguish between core values and practices; the core values dona��t change, but the practices might.A� Wea��ve also remained clear that profit a�� as important as it is a�� is not why the Hewlett-Packard Company exists; it exists for more fundamental reasons.a�?
A� A� A� John Young, former CEO, Hewlett-Packard
A�How to Construct your Vision
How do you want to see yourself in this business? How do you want people to talk about you and your business after you retire? What values are most important to you? What ideology do you follow in your business?
Managersa�� exercise.A�A�To figure out what your core values are, imagine that you are opening an office on Mars. You can only take three agents with you on your spaceship. Name those three agents. What are the core values of these agents? Who in your office doesn’t exhibit those values? Why is he/she still with you?
Looking back:A�Imagine you are at your own memorial, watching from above. What are others saying about you? Whata��s most memorable about you?
Voicing those BHAGs
What is a great goal you would love to accomplish in your business, but really dona��t feel ita��s possible for you within five years? Write it right now.
Note: In the complimentary business planning webinar, we’ll be exploring vision and agents will actually write some BHAGS!
Why We Dona��t Reach Those Lofty Goals
Is that goal thata��s been eluding you congruent with your core values? What I mean by that is, does that goal feel comfortable to you? For instance, if that goal is that youa��ll make two million dollars, and you dona��t like the feeling of that much money, because your values are aligned differently, you just arena��t going to reach that goal. That, I believe is the reason many of us dona��t reach some of our goals. Those goals arena��t in alignment with our core values.
Herea��s what great motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said about goal-value alignment:
You cana��t consistently perform in a manner that is inconsistent with the way you see yourself.
Finding your Alive, Powerful Motivation
In my business planning system, I also provide another method to check your motivation.
Click hereA�to get this document.
Ia��m convinced that we reach or dona��t reach our goals based on the intensity of our desire, driven not by cold numbers, but by the warm emotion of aligned values and inspiring goals. Yogi Berra said it well:
Life is like baseball; ita��s 95% mental and the other half is physical.
