Refocus Your Vision to Achieve Success

When you first launched your business, you knew what your objectives were and how you were going to achieve those objectives.  But over time, things can get a little cloudy.

“As businesses become more complex, ideas change and ‘shiny objects’ pop up to knock you off track,” says Gino Wickman, author of Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (BenBella Books, 2011).

To be successful, however, a business tends to grow in plateaus and at each level, it is not uncommon to “hit the ceiling.”  The symptom is the feeling of being stuck and frustrated.  Everything becomes complex and chaotic and you just can’t seem to break through to the next level. This happens because at certain points in its growth, the business tends to outgrow some of its employees, its leaders start to lose focus and over time, the right employee may no longer be in the right seat.  It is at this stage that entrepreneurs need to define their crystal clear vision.  In order to develop this vision, an entrepreneur needs to ask himself these eight questions in order to regain focus and become more productive:

  1. What are your core values?

 The philosophical beliefs of any company will stem from the owner’s core values.  Entrepreneurs should define three to five characteristics – such as integrity, commitment, empowerment, collaboration and enthusiasm – that represent the company and its employees.  When you identify these values, you can quickly create a company culture and assess whether to hire or fire someone according to how they match the company’s values.  These core values should also be used to review, reward and recognize employees to ensure that everyone follows the same core values.  This will create a common culture within the organization and help everyone to row in the same direction.

  1. What is your core focus?

A company’s core focus is the service it provides to the world.  Often this is called your unique selling proposition and it’s what sets you apart from your competition.  Once you have a clear vision of your core focus, you won’t waste time on, or be distracted by those things that don’t fit your focus.  Once defined, you can now focus all of your time and effort on cultivating the product(s) or service(s) that you love to deliver and excel at.

  1. What is your 10-year target?

This is the number one overriding goal of your organization.  You need to ask yourself where you want the company to be in ten years – the big win.  The target could be revenue related, such as reaching $10 million in sales, or sales related, such as getting a referral from every client.  If you don’t know where you want to go, how do you expect to get there?  Once determined, the leadership team should focus its energy in that one direction. 

  1. What is your marketing strategy?

A company’s approach to marketing should be simple:

  • identify your ideal target market, including demographic, geographic and psychographic information
  • identify the unique solutions to solve your market’s biggest fears, frustrations or worries 
  • avoid looking at what you want to offer clients and focus on what it really is that your clients want and need to solve their issues or problems
  • identify the best way you can get this information across to your target market
  • decide what kind of guarantee or promise you can offer your market to create confidence.

Your goal is to cut through the marketing overwhelm and put perspective clients’ minds at ease.

At this point, you have now defined who you are, what you are, where you want to go and how you plan to get there.  The next four points provide the strategy on how to create the traction to get you there.

  1. What is your three-year picture?

The purpose of identifying the three year picture is because you need a clear idea of what your company will look like three years from now.  Write down your mental image or create a vision board.  This picture will help you determine where your company needs to be in three years in order to reach your 10-year target.  For example, if your 10-year target is to reach $10 million in sales, your three-year picture might be achieving sales of 25% to 35% of the gap between current sales and the ten year sales target.  Other items to consider could include:

  • the number of units produced,
  • market share,
  • number of clients,
  • the number of employees that will be needed,
  • the size and type of facilities required and
  • new or replacement equipment needed to meet the sales target. 

The three year plan will also serve as a blueprint for creating the one-year plan.  

When you can actually visualize your target, you’re more likely to be focused on making sure it happens.  It’s a simplified approach to strategic planning and will help you get ideas out of your head and onto paper.  Once two years have passed, a new three year plan should be created to keep the company on track to hit its 10 year target.

  1. What is your one-year plan?

Every company should set three to seven goals each year that will move you towards your three-year picture and your 10-year target.  You don’t need a multipage plan with countless priorities, objectives and initiatives.  However, it is important to identify the impediments that stand in the way of meeting your targets.  The goals should then be set in order to address and overcome these obstacles.  The simpler the process, the more likely the plan will succeed.

  1. What are your quarterly priorities?

Entrepreneurs should identify their 3 to 7 goals for each 90-day period, such as close $500,000 in new business, document the delivery process or produce 1,000 units.  Quarterly goals are important because research has found that humans can channel their energy on one set of goals for about 90 days before they start to lose focus.  Four of these quarters will come together to form a one-year plan.

  1. What are your issues?

Getting your fears and worries onto paper can be therapeutic because it allows you to deal with them more objectively.  Once everything is before you in black and white, it’s much easier to get into execution mode.  From there, on a weekly basis, your leadership team should select three of the most critical issues and spend 5 minutes on the first issue, defining the real core issue, then no more than 5 minutes discussing the issue and the rest of the time should be spent solving that issue.  Once the first issue has been resolved or placed on the Action Item list, the next item should be solved in the same way.  When the first 3 issues have been solved, the next 3 most important issues should be selected and the same procedure followed until a total of 60 minutes have passed.   During the 60 minute session, the leadership team may solve only 1 issue, or they may solve 10 issues, but the issues solved will be the most important issues facing the company, because of the selection process.  By following this strategy, the issues that could block the success of achieving the quarterly goals are addressed and resolved.

Once these eight questions are answered, they should be documented on a two page summary report and circulated to everyone in the company.  This will ensure that everyone understands where the company is going, how it is going to get there and how each employee and department will need to function in order to help the company achieve the targets.  Good, continuous communications and repeated reminders will serve to keep everyone on track and focused for success.