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Like a Shining Beacon in the Night (BV23)

About 50% to 70% of business improvement efforts fail according to many studies, yet I’ve discovered on an approach that is delivering a 70% success rate on my improvement work. In this video, I’ll share one piece of the puzzle that has helped make this success possible.

Hi there, Matts Rehnstrom here, Shaper of Business Excellence. In this video, let us then take the business idea that I talked about in the previous video and break that down and talk about vision.

Vision

Vision is something that will give us a feeling of where we’re heading. The business idea, as I in a previous video, gives us what we do, what value we create, and for whom we’re doing it. Vision tells us how much should we do of this within a certain period. We’re not stating a certain period saying that it’s five years or it’s six years or it’s July 2018 or 19 or whatever. We say within a scope of time, between three to five years or five to eight years. It depends on what business we’re working in. A fast-paced business has a shorter term for the vision.

Without a Clear Vision, the Organization will Experience Confusion

If you don’t have a vision, and I see a lot of organizations that don’t, you get a little bit so fuzziness confusion within the business. People don’t know what direction they should go. Their business idea, if they have that, gives them some guidance, but they need a vision so they can aim for it.

The business idea is more saying in what broad path we’re going, not how far we should go in this certain amount of time. So if you don’t have a vision you will have confusion within the organization because people will focus on doing only day to day stuff.

Your employees will say, “Yeah, I do this and I do that, and then I go home and I come back tomorrow and I do a little bit more about this and a little bit more about that.”

But if you have a vision, then people will feel that they’re a part of a movement going forward. They can see this path that they’re walking on and they will see where they’re heading.

A Vision is Like A Shining Beacon in the Night!

A vision is like a shining beacon in the night. If you’re out at sea and you can see the light of the beacon out there, then you can see that you’re heading in the right direction. It’s the same within a business. You can see this vision over here and you can, oh, that’s where we’re moving.

How to Create Vision for Your Organization

What do you need to do to create a vision for your business?

  1. Read through your business idea: read through the business idea that you worked with as a result of the last video where I talked about the business idea.
  2. Decide how much of the business idea you are going to accomplish in the midterm future: so you look at a business idea, and you say, “How far can we reach within a certain amount of time?”
  3. Write the vision so that it feels good reading it: You can write a vision that is short and to the point and when you read it you should feel good.
  4. Involve the team in the creation of the vision: Don’t do this as a management team or by yourself.

So one is that you do a short, catchy version of your vision. This way, when people ask “What’s our vision?” people at the company can say “It says blah, blah, blah, whatever.”

But when people read this through, they have this emotion within them that tells them that we’re on the right track. We’re heading towards this beautiful future that I want to be a part of.

Also when you’re creating the vision, don’t do this as a management team, sitting in a corner office somewhere and you come up with a great vision that you hope is going to be a good one for the business. No work with the team, they need to be a part of this. The more you can involve the team in creating the vision, the more you’re sure that they want to be a part of the journey that takes you towards this nice future over there that they aiming for because they’ve all been a part of creating that vision.

So don’t forget that it’s very, very important.

Do You Have a Vision or are About to Create One?

So about your business. What do you think is, do you have a vision at all or are you about to create a vision? And if you have a vision, is it a fuzzy one or does it feel good reading it? Is it clear and giving you that emotion that you want to have in order to work towards that vision?

Please leave a comment down below because I’m excited to know how you’re doing in your business. And then also, if you like to have a downloadable copy of this poster where you can follow along and you can also then read more about all the connection between these different business components. Then click here and it will take you to a page where you will be able to download this poster for free and you can take a closer look to all the things that I will talk about in this video series. And with that said, let’s go and shape our business for excellence.