Enhance productivity in your business: 3 steps to creating a powerful vision statement

Did you know very few businesses and professional people have a clear, documented vision of what they want to achieve? It’s quite surprising that most people start each week without a clear idea of what they are striving for! They get carried away with daily tasks and confuse business with busyness.

Why is it essential to have a clear vision?

Having a clear vision allows you to work on your “why power” instead of your willpower. Vision provides focus, and focus is essential to achieve your goals.

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus” - Bruce Lee.

It is hugely important to establish clarity and focus. And to maintain this focus, it’s vital to have a clear picture of your future success.

When you go on holiday and arrive at the airport with your family, how often do you stand in front of the departure boards and look to see where else you could go? Do you stand there and say, “well, now it’s 3 pm; at 4 pm, we could go to Spain; at 6 pm, we could go to Italy, and if we wait until tomorrow morning, we could go to Jamaica”

This sounds ridiculous as, in reality, you wouldn’t make such last-minute, spur-of-the-moment decisions. Before starting your family holiday, you likely have at least a rough plan and a picture of what your ideal holiday will look like. If your children love swimming, you’ve probably chosen a hotel with a large pool, or if you love to have romantic meals by the marina, then you wouldn’t book to stay somewhere inland.

Here’s the thing… many busy professionals approach their business in the wrong way; they turn up without a clear picture of what they want their business to look like or even what they are trying to achieve in life.

Having a clear vision is the starting point.

Step One:

Take a few minutes to think in detail and visualise the perfect day in your business. Write down what made it so perfect by asking yourself the following questions:

1. What were you doing that day?
2. Which other people did you interact with? Customers, employees, investors, suppliers etc
3. What value did you receive or could you provide for someone else?
4. What results did you achieve that day?

Creating this picture of your perfect day is a great way to start clarifying what you want your business to look like.

Step Two:

Decide which performance metrics signal success and are, therefore, most important for you to measure in your business.

You can measure success regarding new customer wins, total sales, or overall turnover. If this appeals to you, consider what turnover target you would like to reach that would signal significant business growth.

You can measure the number of active customers you have. Consider your ideal customer base, the types of companies included, and how many highly engaged active customers you would like to have.

Are you most concerned with achieving a certain amount of net profit, which would enable you to earn a specific income whilst easing back on the time you invest in the day-to-day running of the business?

Decide the most important metric to measure to signify success in your business.

Step Three:

Once you have completed steps one and two, you will clearly know what a perfect day looks like and have decided on the most critical metric to measure that will signify success in your business.

Now it’s time to consider other aspects of your life; adding a personal element to this exercise helps make your vision even more motivational and inspirational.

Many business leaders need help to set clear boundaries between their work life and their personal life, often resulting in their work spilling over into other areas. This is why it’s vital to get clear on what you want your life to look like.

Let’s say you have reached your business goals and achieved the level of corporate success you are striving for; what will you do with your time? Who do you spend most of your time with? If you have a family, what would it mean?

So, the idea behind step three is to establish the bigger picture, allowing you to clearly understand the drivers behind why you want to achieve a specific level of success in your business.

Remember, it’s all about your ‘why power,’ not just your willpower!

At the end of these three steps, combine everything you have thought about in each stage and create a four or five-sentence vision. This vision should identify and describe the following points:

• What are you going to do?
• How are you going to do it?
• Who are you doing it for?
• What benefits will you receive from your efforts?
• How will your life look when you have achieved all you set out to achieve?

Once you have created this vision, you must share it with others in your business so they know exactly what you are trying to achieve.

At Reclaro, we realise the importance of having a clear vision, sharing it across the business and combining it with daily goals. Using the goal-setting framework of OKRs, Objectives and Key Results helps business leaders set and cascade their vision, objectives and goals amongst all teams in the company to achieve better results and faster growth.

Our award-winning 1-3-5® OKR software starts with setting the vision that directs the objectives, which helps decide the key results. It all starts with your vision, and our system allows users to add their vision to their plans.

For more advice and guidance on creating your vision, contact us by emailing hello@reclaro.com, and we’ll be happy to help.