• What do I need to do to be successful in this firm?
• Do our leaders have enough self-awareness to recognize their limitations and overcome them?
• What are the weaknesses in our culture and how can we prevent them from getting in our way?
• What are the deficient behaviors our culture exhibits, and how can we solve them?
The great work of Jim Collins, Simon Sinek and many other business authors reminds us that our visions and missions have to be genuine if they are to be effective. Propaganda visions and fake missions inspire no one and propel no business forward. In fact, they damage the credibility of a firm’s leadership and demoralize the team.
Many successful businesses derive from one entrepreneur’s sense of direction and purpose. But those things are a bit like true love—they tend to happen only when they happen. Locking up a dozen financial executives in a boardroom will not produce a love poem no matter how many times they use the word “passionate.”
Vision
Without vision and direction, a business can easily get lost in the daily scramble to service clients and find new relationships. Routine can lead to stagnation.
The vision should be more than a bunch of big words. It should be something that helps you make difficult decisions, not avoid them.
Take, for example, the founder of a technology consulting firm I once briefly worked with. He and his co-founders were at first working out of the basement in his house. He told me at the time that their vision was simple but compelling: “Get out of the basement!” As simple as it was, it was tangible, and told you everything you needed to know.