If everything worked out for you and your business the way you wanted it to, what would the end result look like? Sometimes it can seem impractical to think in these terms. Distractions come hard and fast, we get a bit bogged down and it gets hard to look up and look out. We can, however, still look inward and remember our original vision of the future, and it’s really important to do so. Vision drift can be just as real as mission drift. Mission drift is often spoken of but vision drift does exist. It’s when we stop believing in that goal of a bright future because of adverse circumstances or the humdrum reality of the here and now. It’s when it seems like the dream could never happen.
Mission sees opportunity and a niche in the market whereas vision is painting a picture of what success ultimately looks like.
Sadly, many people succumb to vision drift, and we’ve seen many businesses experiencing challenges related to activities that are not aligned to a vision. Rather than having a vision board they have just gotten vision bored. Pun intended, but it’s not funny when you have had enough and are about to give up on your dream.
Here’s some tips to help you to give your vision back its velocity…
1 Vision needs to be valued
Having the right team around you is about having a team that shares your values. You need to know what your values are and be able to communicate them to your team.
A shared set of values is the very thing that keeps your team on mission towards achieving your vision. A common misconception about values is that they are only there to judge morality when in fact the purpose of values is to help you make the right choices to keep you on track. When you know your values you can hire people with a completely different skill set who share your values – they’ll be an asset rather than a threat to you and your vision will still be fulfilled.
2 Vision needs to be visible
Keeping something constantly visible is powerful. Keeping our end goal before our eyes is a constant reminder of where we are headed. A simple way of doing this is by finding an image (or more than one image, there might be one for every area of your life that you have a vision for) then keep it as your wallpaper on your phone and you’ll be looking at it every few minutes.
3 Vision needs a voice
When you are networking, stop going in for the hard sell and share the vision that you have from your heart. Your vision has more to do with a compass than a road map. Your vision is your true north, it’s where you are heading, that’s exciting, because you can take people along with you if you know where you are going.
4 Vision needs a vehicle
We’ve ascertained that you need the right people but you also need the right vehicle for the journey. We can’t meet face to face any more so we have to find an online vehicle! Cre8ion recently inspired 500 crafters to pivot and get their products online. These crafters were found through an email database and then Facebook advertising created a crowd of people all with the same problem – how do we pivot our craft businesses online? The result was that everybody received the help that they needed. Crafty marketing!
We need to start with the end in mind and work backwards.
If we want to reach 1 million people (an achievable target with all the digital tools we have at our disposal) then we need to give ourselves a time frame to work to. If it’s 5 years then we work out how many people we need to reach by the end of this year (I make that 62,500).
5 Vision has a version
Your vision is scalable and it can move. It may grow or you might want to diversify and move into another sector. If your vision is to be number one in the UK and you achieve that, your vision will by necessity change, to world domination, perhaps? Like an app which has different iterations with different features, the mission remains the same but the vision changes into different versions.
It pays to have a large vision. NASA had the goal of getting into space, once achieved, their vision was to land on the Moon.
When lifting weights you have to continue to exercise your muscles to experience the change you want to see. Keeping the vision front and centre of every day life involves some exercising too, although it’s a different set of muscles.
The good news is that we’ll see a shift when we deal with vision drift.