How Not to Lose Vision While Moving Fast and Forward in Business
When businesses start operating, they try their very best to work hard and put in the optimum effort. But when they get disappointed, they can easily lose sight of their vision and they just stop trying to achieve their business goals.
To efficiently run a successful business, it is very crucial to keep your vision alive.
8 Tips for Keeping Your Business Vision Alive
1. Develop a Clear Vision Statement
Keeping your business vision alive begins when you’ve developed a clear vision statement. If you don’t have such yet, sit down and write a clear vision statement for your business. Take into account the reasons why you started your business and what you hope to attain.
Apart from planning goals, always keep your vision in your mind. Knowing what you want won’t matter if you just throw it in a drawer and just think about it once every six months. Write it down where you can see it often or post it somewhere visible in your office.
2. Turn Your Vision Statement Into an Image
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, consider using this to your great advantage. Instead of just posting your vision statement, find pictures that will make you think of what your business goals are, and position them in places where you can easily see. For instance, you can place the picture in a frame and hang it on your wall. This will constantly remind you of what you are working toward.
3. Be Optimistic
You may be surrounded by negative people, but do your best to avoid thinking negatively as well. As much as you possibly can, minimize your exposure to these negative individuals. Attitude can permeate your immediate environment, so make sure that you are keeping your vision on track and surround your business with positive people.
Why? Because when you get discouraged or disappointed, these individuals will help you get back on track once again. Choose those who are honestly concerned with your vision’s success and those who can push you to always do your very best.
4. Let Your Work Reflect Your Vision
This means not just working toward achieving your goals but also associating with those who are feeling the same. Try to contact or partner with businesses that have a similar vision and beliefs as yours. These people will definitely help you in sticking with what you want and in achieving success.
5. Be Organized
Get organized by developing processes and checklists that will help you stay on track. You can ask help from a personal business coach to make sure that these structures and processes will keep you from deviating or falling off the path.
For instance, create a daily or weekly planning agenda, monitor your progress, and be reminded of your tasks and deadlines. You can also meet with your stakeholders or partners to ensure that they support your vision and the specific efforts you are doing to achieve it.
6. Track and Measure
By constantly tracking and measuring your progress, you motivate yourself and you become aware of how you are advancing toward achieving your business goal. Today, there are plenty of tools you can use to do this. These include a simple checklist, project management software, spreadsheet, or any software meant for goal tracking.
Tracking is very important. As you are measuring your progress, you gain greater insight into your journey, enabling you to adjust and alter your plans.
7. Set Up Rewards
Setting up rewards for reaching certain milestones and achieving your vision is an excellent way of keeping yourself motivated to progress to the end.
8. Review and Revise Your Vision Statement
When you’re having a hard time focusing on your vision statement, perhaps it does not reflect what you want anymore. As such, you must review and revise it. This revision can help your organization capitalize on emerging markets, new trends, and situational opportunities. Keep in mind, though, that you should not revise your vision statement over and over again, or you will not accomplish anything at all.
These tips will help you transform your vision into reality. The journey won’t be easy, but the reward will definitely be worth it. You must never lose faith in yourself and in your business.
Salma El-Shurafa is an experienced Executive Coach and founder of The Pathway Project. She is a Professional Certified Coach by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach from The Coaches Training Institute (CTI) and a graduate of CTI’s Co-Active Leadership program.