Without a sound business plan that clearly defines your objectives and lays out the steps you’ll take to achieve them, even the most brilliant idea is just an idea.
But in this age of Big Data and analytics, it’s vital not to forget the human component that separates us from the machines. While your business plan should certainly be rooted in hard data and metrics, you don’t want to be so bogged down in numbers that you squeeze out the imagination — the beating heart — that inspired you to start this business in the first place. And that same ambition is key to the company’s future. That’s why every plan should start with a vision.
A vision instills creativity in planning your company’s future. It’s meant to be simultaneously challenging, but realistic and attainable. A company’s vision is long-term and comes from the hearts and minds of the executive team. The more people involved, the harder it can be to incorporate each perspective into a true vision. But there are ways to arrive at a singular focus from the input of everyone at the table. Here are some tips:
- Foster a free exchange of ideas among all people involved.
- Make it a point to learn what each person brings to the table — understand their jobs and roles and clearly explain yours.
- Come to a general collective understanding of the company’s intended direction: Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we want to get from here to there?
- Know what the vision is — not just how it reads (we’ll get to the vision statement later).
Visions should be powerful. They should generate an image in the minds of employees that can inspire and fuel their enthusiasm, ambition, and creativity. The business plan will explain the benchmarks, the revenues, sales, dates, and other hard numbers that will define progress and success for the business moving forward. But the vision will provide the spirit and soul of the company, the intangible and often unquantifiable measurement of a company’s true success.
Once that vision is distilled into something you can easily communicate, it’s time to sit down and put it into words. Next month, we’ll work on writing your company’s vision statement, which will do more than just define your business’s purpose. The vision statement will be a maxim that you, your employees, your vendors, and your customers can point to in order to guide their decisions as the company continues to grow.