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The 12 Week Year — Chapter-13: Establish Your Vision
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Chapter 13 Establish Your Vision The first step to creating breakthrough with the 12 Week Year is to craft a great vision for yourself. This should be a fun and inspiring exercise. Vision is critical because there will be days when you just won’t feel like taking action on your plan. To help you stay on track, you will need a powerful reason why—and that’s your vision. Sal Durso, a long-time friend and client, has a personal take on the power of vision. We have applied the disciplines of the 12 Week Year in our firm for years. It has become second nature to us, it is the way that we get stuff done, and it is the way that we stay on track even when things get in the way. Not long ago our firm lost a big part of our revenue when a group of our key advisors left and took with them their clients and their revenue. As you would expect, this was an extremely trying time for the firm, and it impacted me both personally and professionally. The people leaving were not just business associates, they were long-time friends as well, and their loss was felt deeply by all of us who remained. I could have put my victim glasses on and placed all of the blame for this loss squarely on those who had left. Okay, looking back there may have been at least a couple of days that I had a why-me attitude, but in the end my desire and vision to build a business that would survive long past my stewardship took over. It was during this time that I took a much-needed summer trip to the incredible state of Alaska. While there, I intentionally shifted my thinking and reflected on the things that have made my life so incredibly wonderful. A relationship with a God who loves me, a wife and family who any man would be proud of, and a business that is
approaching a milestone that few will ever see—50 years in profitable operation! As part of the trip to Alaska, we took a fantastic rafting journey down the Kennicott River. As we navigated our way around yet another scenic bend in the river, an incredible sea of purple flowers appeared. The flowers spread across the mountainside as far as the eye could see. Our guide said that this was called “fireweed,” and just a few years ago this vista had been a charred remnant of a forest fire. When this purple blanket appears, it is the first sign that the forest is regenerating. It filled me with awe and a sense of hope and expectation for the new forest that was to come. Apparently even nature has a way to create a vision for what is to follow. It occurred to me then that rather than contemplate the charred remains of our loss, we needed to focus on the new signs of rebirth in our business. As leader of the organization it was clear to me that our firm needed the same vision that I just had, and it was my role to set it. Arriving back in my office excited and refreshed, much of the next few weeks was spent talking with each of our team members, asking them what they felt made our organization unique, and what they thought about the future. These discussions and hours of contemplation helped me craft a vision that one year later is our fireweed field—the guiding light for our company. A year after our forest fire, the fireweed has emerged, and the young saplings that will make us stronger than ever before are germinating. Our leadership team, advisors, and staff all say that our firm is a better place because of what happened a short year ago. As leaders I know the vision that we all are committed to is the change agent that will shape our organization for years to come. True success will happen when people bound by a common vision work together for a common outcome. More firestorms may come, but our vision and faith will carry us through. Sal saw the power of vision to create movement and progress and took action. Many people miss out on the potential of vision to create the emotional energy needed to inspire positive action even in an environment
of charred earth. Do you have charred earth like Sal had, or are you doing fine but aspire to greater heights? In both scenarios, a compelling vision is a powerful force to move you forward. The most powerful visions address and align your personal aspirations with your professional dreams. In the end, your professional vision often funds and enables your personal vision. For your vision to help you to push through the discomfort of change, you must be clear on what it is you want to create in life. Most people focus primarily on their business or career, but your business is just part of your life, and it is actually your life vision that gives traction and relevance to your business. The best visions are big ones. In our experience, nothing great is ever accomplished without first being preceded by a big vision. All of the great accomplishments of mankind from medicine to technology to space travel to the World Wide Web were first envisioned and then created. All of your big personal accomplishments must also be preceded by big visions. So we challenge you to dream big and imagine true greatness for yourself. Your vision should be big enough that it makes you feel at least a little bit uncomfortable. Impossible, Possible, Probable, Given Unfortunately, when we imagine a future that is significantly bigger than our current reality, we can begin to think that it is impossible for us. We can see others who have achieved great things, but we start to think that there is no way that we can get there. When you start to envision a significant accomplishment that is well beyond what you’ve achieved in the past, the question most people immediately ask is: How would I do this? This is the wrong question so early in the process. The fact is, you don’t know how to do it because if you did, you would likely be doing it already and living that reality. The fact that you don’t know how to do it creates the perception that it is impossible, at least for you, and it makes you think of new goals on a sliding scale of impossibility to certainty. Your ability to do something is malleable in this mind-set. The problem is that, if you think something is
impossible, you will never attain it. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” The first step, then, to reaching your biggest dreams is to shift from impossible thinking to possible thinking. You do this not by asking How? but by asking What if ? What would be different for you, your family, your friends, your team, your clients, and your community? By asking What if ?, you give yourself permission to entertain the possibility and begin to connect with the benefits. As you do this, the desire intensifies and the door on your future cracks open just a fraction, but enough so you automatically begin to shift from impossible to possible thinking. Once you see your vision as possible, then you begin the shift from possible to the next level: probable. You make this shift by asking the question that we avoided earlier: How might I? How is not a bad question; in fact, it is a perfectly good question, but the timing is critical. Ask it too early, and it shuts down the whole process, but once you see your vision as possible, the question of how is an essential one. If the question of what if ? is the visioning question, then the question of how is the planning question. The final shift needed in your thinking to create an effective vision is to move from probable to given. This shift happens naturally as you begin to implement the planned actions. Given is a powerful state of mind where any question of doubt is gone and, mentally, you are already standing in the end results. As you see the results start to materialize, your thinking shifts almost automatically to given (see Figure 13.1). Figure 13.1 The execution journey is first a thinking journey. If you think that something is impossible—it is. The most important thing is to believe that you can reach your goals.
Crafting Your Vision The best visions balance your personal and professional lives. Typically your passion comes from your personal vision, and passion is the energy source that helps you push through the pain of change and the valley of despair. If you’re going to create breakthrough and reach your next level, you will need to move through the fear, uncertainty, and discomfort of the valley of despair. It is your personal vision that keeps you in the game when things become difficult. Your vision provides you with a line of sight, an emotional link to help you overcome the challenges and execute. When the task seems too difficult or unpleasant, you can reconnect with your vision. It is this emotional connection that will provide you with the inner strength to forge ahead in spite of any difficulties, enabling you to achieve your dreams and desires. There are three time horizons that you’ll want to focus your vision on:
- Long-term aspirations
- Mid-term goals, about three years into the future
- 12 Weeks (covered in the next chapter) Aspirational Vision
So let’s start with the long-term aspirational vision. In formulating your vision, you must let your mind expand to imagine and even embrace the possibilities that often get pushed aside in our daily lives as being not immediate enough to command our attention, impractical, or too audacious to even consider, let alone pursue. Take a few minutes right now and think about all of the things that you want to have, do, and be in your life. What is most important to you physically, spiritually, mentally, relationally, financially, professionally, and personally? How much time freedom do you want? What income do you desire? Write everything you can think of on a sheet of paper; leave nothing off the page. Now, take the items from your page that you connect with emotionally and construct a vision for your life 5, 10, 15 years into the future. Be bold, be courageous; create a life vision that inspires you and fulfills your purpose. There are no right or wrong answers. This is the life you deeply desire. Aspirational Vision
Three-Year Vision Now that we’ve got you thinking about the possibilities in your life, let’s get specific. Based on your long-term vision, what do you want to create over the next three years? Describe in as much detail as possible what a great personal and professional life would look like three years from today. The more specific you are at this stage, the easier it will be to create your 12 week goals and your plan. Three-Year Vision
Thinking Shift By its nature, vision is a thinking exercise, but how you view the concept of vision will impact the degree to which you leverage and benefit from it. The predominant limiting belief regarding vision is that it is soft and fluffy, insignificant in the success equation and the attainment of results. As you now know, that is not the case. Vision, when engaged properly, is the ignition switch and power source of high performance. It is the all- important why behind the things you do. When viewed in this light, vision has the power to enable one to confront and conquer fears, take bold consistent action, and live a life of significance. The shift in thinking from seeing vision as fluff, to seeing it as the mother of all antecedents is a fundamental shift in thinking that will pay huge dividends. When you understand the true power of vision, you will want to spend more time connecting with your own vision to begin to free yourself from the self-imposed limitations that have held you back. Vision is the starting point of all high performance. Team Application While vision is generally an intensely personal exercise, a manager can often take specific actions that will help their direct reports to more effectively leverage their visions. Vision is the best starting point for all effective performance-based coaching relationships, because vision creates ownership. If your direct reports take ownership of their visions, it will be much easier to help them to own their goals and plan tactics as well. This is
a critical step, because without it the goals and plans they develop will be yours, not theirs. Review the visions of your team in individual one-on-one sessions. Ask permission to review their professional visions with them. Dig into why the business vision they have is important to them. Explore what achieving their business goals enables in their personal lives. Inquire about the level of ownership and emotional connection they have for their vision. Questions That Uncover the Degree of Ownership Why are the elements of your vision important to you? What will you be able to do if you reach your vision that you cannot do now? What will be different for you, your family, your friends, your peers, your clients, your community, if you reach that goal? Are you willing to commit to the actions needed to reach your vision? Who have you shared your vision with? How often have you looked at your vision since you wrote it? What actions do you have to take to make progress on your vision and reach your 12 week goal? What risks or barriers exist that may get in the way of you reaching your vision and goals? How can I best support and help you achieve your goals and vision? Once they have clear ownership of their visions, the next step is to help them build an action plan to achieve them. The how-to section on 12 week planning in Chapter 14 will help you to assist with that step. When you conduct individual coaching sessions with your direct reports (and we encourage you to do these at least monthly), start the conversations with their vision. Are they making progress? Discuss their willingness to take the day-to-day actions necessary to reach it. If they are unwilling to take the difficult actions, confront them with the reality that they won’t attain their long-term vision. The breakdown is a question of ownership. When an individual is reluctant to take the necessary actions required to accomplish a goal, it is an indication that they own their current comfort more than they own the future described in their vision. In these cases, people have a couple of choices: They can either lower their expectations in life, or find the courage and discipline to execute the plan tactics
consistently. The good news is that many times when confronted with this choice, your team members will reconnect and choose their aspirational vision over mediocrity. Team Visions As a leader, it’s important that you establish a team vision for your company, division, or group. We are not talking about a vision statement that is worded just so and framed and hung on the wall. The team vision is similar to the individual vision in that it describes the destination at a fixed point in the future. As a group, you will want to put some stakes in the ground with regard to what matters most. This is best accomplished by having each team member first work through their individual visions, then come together as a group to create a common team vision. When creating the team vision, you will want to apply many of the same dynamics used in creating your personal visions. Start with the long-term by having everyone brainstorm what a great company or office would look like in the future. Get them to be as specific as possible and assign numeric values where applicable. Give everyone a chance to share their thoughts with the group, then narrow the horizon, look three years out, and work together to determine the specific elements that will stay part of the vision and those that won’t. Common Pitfalls and Success Tips Pitfall 1: You don’t take the power of vision seriously. Some people, especially type-A people, think that vision is fluff. Those who think about vision this way tend to leap past the question of purpose and dive into action. The problem is that when the going gets difficult, it is harder to stay committed to the work in the long run because there is no compelling reason, no persuasive why. The behaviors associated with this pitfall are not keeping your vision in front of you, not aligning your plans with it, and not remembering what is in it.
Pitfall 2: The vision isn’t meaningful to you. Sometimes we are superficial in crafting our vision. We capture what we think we want—what we think we are supposed to want— rather than capturing what is meaningful to us. Visioning takes time. Keep working on it until you have something that connects emotionally. Pitfall 3: Your vision is too small. A small vision doesn’t call on our best efforts. We don’t have to reach and we don’t sacrifice our comfort. A small vision might be achievable, but we leave our best undelivered. To be most effective, your vision should make you feel uncomfortable and challenge you to do things differently—and do different things. Pitfall 4: You don’t connect your vision to your daily actions. Each day is an opportunity to either make progress on your vision or tread water. If you work from a plan that is aligned with your vision, you can be sure that you are acting on the most important things every day. You’ve crafted your vision and checked to avoid making those common mistakes. Now, here are three important action steps to take to make your vision even more powerful for you: Success Tip 1: Share it with others. Sharing your vision increases your commitment to it. When you tell someone else what you want in life, you feel more responsibility to act. Success Tip 2: Stay in touch with your vision. Print it out and keep it with you. Review it each morning and update it every time that you discover ways to make it more vivid and meaningful to you. Success Tip 3: Live with intention. At the end of each day, take a few minutes to reflect on the progress that you made today. Did it move you forward, or was it filled with activity that wasn’t related to your vision? Resolve to be intentional in your actions to make progress on your vision. What action will you take tomorrow?