Do you have a vision for your practice? For your personal life? Because, in our opinion, you are working foolishly if you don’t. What great leader or business owner never had a vision? Even if the business did not ultimately achieve the vision, the plan to achieve it launched the business to further growth and success.
Is Craig McCaw a success because his vision to enable a cellular connection across the country became a reality, or a failure because he wasn’t able to launch his satellite cellular business? Is Bill Gates a failure because his company’s vision of having “a personal computer on every desk and in every home” hasn’t quite happened? W. Clement Stone is quoted as saying, “Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.” Bad science aside, you, and your practice, need a vision to help ensure your place in the stars.
Why is having a vision important? You can’t know whether you’ve succeeded if you haven’t broadly defined success. If you haven’t defined success, you haven’t created a road map to get there. And if you haven’t created the road map, you don’t know how to most effectively spend your time when you work
toward your goals.
Joe Biden said, “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” Without a vision, you risk budgeting your time on tasks that don’t put you on the path to success, taking you farther from the things you value. Spending your time without a proper plan is rather like defining your vision by looking through the rear view mirror. Ultimately, you may need to use that rear view mirror to reflect on where and how you’ve spent your time to help you define your vision, but the rear view is small look at the road, and the windshield is much bigger.
To be truly successful, you must have a vision. For your practice, you should define the strategic goals and direction without necessarily getting bogged down in the day-to- day operation and tactical implementation. Start by asking yourself, Where do you want your business to be in 3 years? And then, because we don’t live or work in the actual vacuum of space, ask yourself, Where do you want your personal life to be in 3 years?
Are those two goals congruent with one another? Is your spouse or partner on board? A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.
What’s your vision?
