Chapter 8

THE GUIDING VISION

IF WE HAVE A CLEAR IDEA but it stems solely from external success factors or advice, we may very well end up with a seemingly successful business that we aren’t passionate about or a business that never takes off for the same lack of passion. If our vision is murky or misplaced, then the results tend to be so as well. In a big-vision small enterprise, a misaligned or unclear vision is a drag on the motivation and inspiration that’s needed to propel a group past mediocrity and into the extraordinary. Creating a clear, inspiring vision—and revisiting it as often as necessary—provides a solid foundation from which to launch the enterprise’s activities, or to which we can return when confusion rules the day and we need that grounding in our original guiding vision.

As do many who endeavor to create a big-vision small enterprise, I know this only too well from my own experience as the founder of Ivy Sea, Inc., a boutique organizational consulting firm that specializes in helping clients create sustainable practices for inspired leadership, respectful communication, and more effective ways of working together.

With a talent for visioning, planning, and implementing what I plan, I created a business that was, by all appearances, everything my advisers and colleagues said it should be: busy and quantitative in focus, with zero debt, a well-appointed office in what would become a trendy neighborhood, eight or so people, a growing and impressive client list, strong revenues, better than average profit margins, and solid, well-researched plans for more, more, more. The problem? I had created a quantitatively focused enterprise and was increasingly cognizant of the difference between that and a big-vision small business. I didn’t feel particularly good about all of the work we were doing; it seemed obvious to me that some of our client companies had no real interest in respectful, effective communication that served those working in and otherwise affected by the companies.

What’s more, I realized that I’d created a team that, though it included terrific and talented people, was more appropriate to the current state of the business than what I had envisioned it could and should be. I followed the line from the picture-perfect business plan to the future it would lead to and decided it wasn’t someplace I wanted to work, much less work at creating. After five years of quantitatively successful entrepreneurship, I started dreading Monday and found myself wondering when and how, given the time, energy, and care I had put into creating the business, that had happened.

“If our vision is murky or misplaced, then the results in the business tend to be so as well”

That’s a pretty sobering day, when the distance between where you thought you were headed, where you are, and where you want to be seems as if it couldn’t be greater; and the very thought of moving away from a business model to which you’ve devoted money, time, and energy and that is so highly regarded by others—people whom you respect and from whom you want respect—seems not just fraught with risk but downright stupid. Regardless, I and my colleagues were determined to change course and navigate our way through an organizational transformation from a quantitatively successful entrepreneurial firm to a qualitatively effective big-vision small enterprise. In committing to the evolution of the firm, we experienced both challenges and successes, as you’ll see. Even with the hurdles and the costs, the visioning and redirecting we did from that day on led us through the evolution of InnoVision Communication to Ivy Sea, Inc. I enjoy my business again, and we are energized each time we revisit our vision and plans for the future. And there have been days when that’s no easy task.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, during a five-year period of frenzied obsession with dot-com startups and initial public offerings (IPOs), the lure of moving to an e-commerce business plan and courting venture capital was incredibly compelling. On some days, the temptation was so strong I’d have to leave the office and spend a few hours walking or at a spa or movie theater to refocus, or simply sit in meditation or prayer until the urge to leap onto the e-bandwagon passed. As I discussed this with trusted colleagues or business advisers during a recent meeting, one adviser asked me why I didn’t do it. A good question, particularly given our journey from quantitative focus to qualitative enterprise. The truth is, while the myth of the instant e-millionaire tempted like the Devil in the desert, the place it beckoned me to is, in my mind, desertlike. Greed, in itself, did not prove a compelling enough vision—not just for me but for the many startup enterprises that ultimately fell flat when funding ran out and there was no prevailing idea or vision to motivate its people or propel the venture through the twin crises of funding and purpose. Greed is not a sustainable source of motivation. Knowing that, and remembering the turnaround we at Ivy Sea had only recently completed, guided us back on course when we were buffeted by external forces, such as well-publicized models of mainstream success in our profit-before-everything culture. To find our way to that sense of equilibrium and clarity, we followed the same ideal, faced the same array of challenges, and tapped the very practices that I share throughout this book.

What is that ideal? For a big-vision small business, it is to do well enough financially by doing something that’s gratifying to those within the organization and truly good, in some way, for the local community or the world. And good, in a big-vision enterprise, goes beyond a periodic, thought-free donation or providing a product or service that does nothing other than encourage people to move faster, spend more, reflect less, eat while driving, talk while eating, work while vacationing, and the like. The world doesn’t need more of business as usual.

Yet it’s also optimal to me, as with other big-vision small-business owners, to make enough money by doing something I love in a way that makes a positive, healthy contribution to the world. That we’re meeting a need, or giving people what they want, or not breaking any laws doesn’t necessarily mean that what we’re doing is right or good or ethical or healthy. And for many of the big-vision small-business owners with whom I spoke, that’s not good enough. The ideal vision is to marry a healthy humanistic bottom line with a healthy financial one. Creating a right-vision small business that’s financially healthy is incredibly difficult, as many such idealist-visionaries can tell you, especially if the business is something other than product manufacturing and the definition of right business goes beyond donating a portion of profits to charitable organizations. Since smaller, privately owned enterprises can be both more agile and independent, experimenting with and exploring the depths of big-vision, right-relationship options and opportunities is more feasible than it is for a larger, investor-driven, quantitatively focused business.

“The leisure-society is actually a nightmare because in reality it’s the self-indulgence society, the filling-time society, the killing-time society, the ‘Why am I here?’ society—with no purpose.”

IAN GARRETT, JESMOND PARISH CHURCH

With this in mind, viewing the big-vision small business as a multifaceted journey is an asset. More important even than what we do as big-vision small-business owners is why we do it, and then how. The what may or may not happen; the need for why—as in “Why am I doing this?”—will most certainly make itself abundantly clear at various points along your journey. This is why taking the time to reflect and vision, and then translating that vision into an action plan, is crucial.

How Does Vision Differ from Mission and Core Values?

The terms vision, mission, and core values have become old from overuse and are often used interchangeably, so a good place to start a visioning process is to make sure we know what we mean by these words. For the purposes of our discussion about big small-business vision, let’s assume the following definitions: Vision. There are several good definitions of vision offered by the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, particularly “the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be”; “something seen in or as if in a dream or trance, often attributed to divine agency”; or “a vivid, imaginative conception or anticipation.”⁹ In many stock market-driven or quantitatively focused organizations, a vision statement is put together as if participants are sleepwalking through the process with no real intention of allowing the vision to transform their own behavior and thus the behavior and destiny of the company.

“We have to describe for the world what this new society will look like. What we currently have is a president saying, ‘We are going to root out terrorism and keep shopping.’ That is not a vision to me. We need truly visionary leaders who can help direct the inner strength of the people.”

REV. DR. MICHAEL BECKWITH, UTNE READER (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2002)

Chiseling a vision statement that summarizes a quantitative goal is very different from reflecting on visionary possibilities and articulating them in a thoughtfully crafted summary that guides the enterprise toward affecting some corner of the world in a positive way. In many companies, if you read through the pleasant jargon, vision or mission statements come down to one clear purpose of the organization: maximizing return to the company’s major investors. As mentioned earlier, visionary enterprise includes qualitative as well as quantitative goals and is thus less likely when the one true goal is increasing revenues for maximum financial returns. Whether this is good or bad depends on your perspective; to me, it’s simply a reality in larger organizations, particularly those that have publicly traded stock, where the owners are greater in number and care primarily about a return on their investment rather than the enterprise’s social mission.

In our big-vision small businesses, the guiding vision should be a picture of reality at its most optimal—a reality that through our work we help in some way, however small, to bring out. A picture that is vivid and imaginative: something we and, we hope, others would anticipate eagerly as a positive and qualitative contribution to the world, or our corner of it. Our vision should be inspired, uncensored by the norms, limitations, and expectations of others. Our vision is what we would create in our most perfect imaginings of what should be possible in the world, and it informs our behavior so that it does, indeed, become possible. In a big-vision small enterprise, the vision goes well beyond simple financial performance, though financial health is a necessary factor for supporting the firm’s work.

Mission. Though inspired by vision, mission is more task oriented. Our mission summary answers the question “If this is our grand vision for our contribution to the world, then what is our practical, day-to-day work to help bring that about?” If our vision was, for example, a world in which no one went hungry, our mission might be to identify locations and causes of hunger, to teach community-specific sustainable farming techniques, or to help teach skills that help unemployed individuals transition to self-sustaining employment. If our vision was to make knowledge accessible to the masses, regardless of class or caste, then our mission might be to create and distribute a high-quality, easy-to-use computer and help connect public libraries and schools to the Internet. If our vision was a world of collaboration and tolerance, our mission might be to foster heightened awareness and improved communication—our vision and mission here at Ivy Sea. Mission can inform what we do, such as the products we offer, or it can be about how we work and interact with others in the course of our business. If the vision is a grand ideal, the mission is one or several of the many practical paths that might help shepherd that ideal into reality.

“Mission comes to us; we don’t go to it. Mission bangs us over the head and expects us to respond”

REV. STUART HOKE ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, NEW YORK

Core Values. Values is another word that’s been worn out by mindless and insincere use, but that doesn’t make the need to know and articulate your values any less important. Core values or principles might be likened to the spine of your business (or whatever other effort you might undertake), the tenets that allow you to begin realizing your mission and vision in the world, starting with your behavior in your own shop. As an organization grows larger and requires layers of hierarchy and process to keep all of the disparate parts aligned with operating goals, a statement of core values becomes more of a suggested way of operating, an optional guide, for individuals within the group. What’s more, as communication becomes more formal and systematized, it by necessity becomes more oriented to departments or divisions rather than to individuals. In a small enterprise, communication can be less formal and more personal; in a big-vision small business, practices of right relationship forge the link even more directly and effectively between the organization’s shared values and an individual’s personal core values. The smaller and more autonomous the group—whether a small business, nonprofit, or group within a larger organization—the more true it is that “work is personal.”

“Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows”

JOHN MILTON

In a big-vision small business, your clearly defined core values, mission, and vision unite to form the lens through which you will view every decision you make during the course of the quarter or year, and by which you measure your effectiveness in and progress toward manifesting your big-vision operating tenets in the daily activities of your enterprise. What if you haven’t articulated your vision, mission, or core values? It’s never too late to begin right where you are.

Why Do You Have to Reflect upon and Articulate Your Vision?

Reflecting upon and articulating your vision, mission, and core values is important to help you and, if applicable, your partners and employees, get very clear on exactly what it is you’re doing and exactly why you’re choosing to spend most of your waking hours doing it. With a vision that stems from your very core, you’ll be able to answer the questions that surface, often more than once, for all business owners: “Why am I doing this? What in the world was I thinking?”

In addition, the fruits of your visioning process give you the raw material for a firmly rooted action plan and allow you to make decisions throughout the year as to whether various opportunities or responses are aligned. Capturing your vision—and your plan, for that matter—on paper takes time, reflection, and work, but it’s a touchstone you can see, feel, and read aloud when pressures grow and the mission seems murky.

A Reflection on Where We Spend Our Time and Energy

Why are you expanding your business, adding employees, diversifying your products or services, moving from your home office to outside space or from a small space to a larger one? Because you can? Because you should? Bad answers. Since you’re going to be the one giving up precious time and energy that could be spent with family, friends, or a favored client project or charitable effort, you have to know that the business is worth as much or more than those other things. You might say, “Well, I want to build the business and maybe sell it so we have something to retire on.” Well, what if you died next year? What if you had an eternity? Would you still have made the right decision on how to best spend your time? Would the sole focus on pursuing one model of numerical business growth still have been worthwhile? Is the traditional model of numerical growth the only path to your retirement vision? What makes you think it holds less risk than any other path?

Such questions can be applied to many of the issues and decisions we make along the path of creating and sustaining our business. And when we know what our vision is at any given time, these questions become easier to answer. Our vision for our business guides us. If you haven’t articulated your vision or haven’t reevaluated it annually at least, you’re hiking tough terrain without a guide. With it, you’ll have an important source of inspiration for you and your team.

The following chapter features a profile that offers a “fly on the wall” perspective of how vision—the sense of doing something wonderful in the world—can guide a big-vision small-business owner through the peaks and valleys, hurdles and leaps of operating his enterprise in the real world. The remaining chapters of this section offer a closer look at visioning practices to help clarify and articulate your vision, as well as practices and exercises to help you leverage the power of big-vision small business by linking your vision and core values to the work that takes place within your organization each day.