If you are an individual wresting with career challenges or transition, or if your organization is facing the question “What’s next?”, a vital first step in taking yourself or your business to the next level, is to embark on a process of visioning. It can be as simple or complex as you like, but it is a great way to expand your thinking, to open up possibilities and to create something to work toward as you chart your future.
Creating a Vision is great if:
- Things are going well, and you wish to tap the momentum and energy to ensure they continue to do so, and to dream about how they could be even better
- Things are so-so, and you would like to refresh or solidify the path you are on, or push even further
- Things have reached an impasse, you feel stuck and know you need to do something differently, but are not quite sure what, or if you want to break a cycle of underachievement and underperformance.
For a Team or Organization, the advantages of Having a Vision are:
- It helps to unify people and align them around a common purpose
- It anchors people in times of stress, change or uncertainty, and serves as a guiding beacon when things are unclear
- It brings to the surface unrealized potential, unexpressed dreams, untapped needs, and unexplored possibilities
- It is a starting point for change; from your vision, flows your mission, strategy and goals. It enables you to create workable action plans to get you from your current circumstances to a state you desire
- It is based in inspiration, passion and creativity, and so can kick-start a person or an organization out of the same old patterns, habits and ways of doing things into a whole new state of mind
- It can spur people to go further and to embark on a course of action that feels exciting and engaging
- It involves stretch and challenges you to achieve far more than you would without it.
Call to Action:
As an individual leader, do you have a personal vision for your leadership or your career?
As a leadership team, have you crafted a vision that can serve as a blueprint for your organization?
Next time, I’ll share my approach to designing a visioning process.