How to Develop Your Vision - Part 4

Here's the fourth part of Developing Your Vision...

Unfortunately, it is impractical to expect every department-head to understand the entire vision. As a matter of fact, it is virtually impossible because it is likely that they do not understand the other disciplines well enough, or have enough access to information. However, a good CEO makes sure each department-head has a complete understanding of their slice of the vision and how it is phased in properly, over time, with the other departments. This can sometimes be done, by creating interlocking goals or end dates that are one or more quarters away. For example, customer-service will hire a new manager when sales hit 20 new customers.

A vision is important because it is what unifies all of the resources on a single 'objective' - which ultimately is a single position in the marketplace. This position must include virtually all product-factors recognizable by a sophisticated buyer in the market, as well as all the variables that make up the complex structure of the organization to create, deliver and service that product. Each day, a CEO will use the vision to measure decisions against, each day the VP of Engineering should be making decisions consistent with his or her slice of the vision, and each day all key management players should be doing the same. If you have someone measuring their daily decisions against their modus operandi at a former company, or just their favorite way of doing things, then odds are you have a personnel problem that needs to be addressed. This is a common problem because human nature dictates that we to do it the way we always have (the easiest way); as opposed to really thinking about how this situation may be different. In my experience, it takes a new CEO four to eight weeks of full-time work to develop a complete vision for the company. This will vary greatly, depending on the complexity of the company, market and product involved.

Vision development must include time spent with customers, time spent with all key employees, and lots of research to validate the theories that are being used to make decisions.

Tomorrow's lesson will go over communicating your vision...

How to Develop Your Vision - Part 3

How to Develop Your Vision - Part 2

How to Develop Your Vision - Part 1