How Vision and Strategy Can Grow Your Business.

Vision and strategy are a powerful combination when it comes to building a business. Are you a visionary or strategy type of person?

It is important to know this so that you can build an effective team. You can’t be all things to all people, however when you recognise your strengths, you can begin to lean into them while at the same time developing others on your team who have other strengths.

Never underestimate the power of vision and strategy working together – they can become a very powerful force in developing a business.

 A Vision Is Just a Dream Without a Plan

Strategic planning is a must when it comes to building a business. It’s great to have vision, but vision needs to be worked out and implemented. If you are more of a visionary, you need someone on your team who can put a blueprint together based on your vision.

As a business growth consultant, I have often seen that a vision can remain just as a vision if there is no clear logical strategy for its development. If you want to move ahead with your vision, you must also plan ahead to stay ahead. Don’t just remain in the ‘dream mode’.

 3 Components To Building a “BIG” Business

When I did my TEDx presentation on Transformation, I outlined three major components of developing a successful business or venture.  Since my company name is Keep Thinking Big, these three components conveniently spell out BIG.

B – Beliefs
What you believe about yourself, your team and your product or service. This is your vision and dream.

I  – Intentionality
There must come a time when our beliefs impact our lives and we step into new areas for the first time. This is where strategy comes into play. This is when we move from dreaming into action.

G – Growth
When we have the right beliefs, vision and dream mixed with an intentional strategy for it to be worked out, we move into growth. We see and experience growth in a way we had not before.

When we begin to play BIG, we have higher hopes and expectations of what is possible. We don’t just remain in the ‘Dream camp’ but we live it out and grow into all that we can.

To watch my TEDX presentation click HERE.

Casting Your Vision (Vision Casting)

Let’s start with the process of creating your vision. This is often called vision casting. It is not just sharing a picture or a hope. There is a skill and art to vision casting.

By the time you finish vision casting, everyone listening on your team should be able to sense where they are within it and what their responsibility is. Effective vision casting raises awareness and responsibility.

Everyone should know that what they bring to the table (or not) impacts the vision becoming reality. This will lead to individuals becoming part of a winning team, where everyone works towards their strengths looking out for each other. Winning teams are in high demand. So what does it take to build a winning team?

Developing Your Plan

The second step to building a business is developing a strategy.

• How will things be implemented?
• What are the financial implications?
• Who will have responsibility for each step?
• What is the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats), telling you about your vision?
• What are the timelines?
• How will progress be monitored?
• What are you missing?

This is not an exhaustive list of questions, but they are some key questions that need to be addressed if vision and strategy are going to work together well.

How Vision and Strategy Work Together

Do not think that visionary and strategic type of people are opposites or can’t work together. In fact, if you embrace each other’s strengths, you can bring all three of the “BIG” components to the table.

To do this consider your strengths and the strengths of those on your team. Don’t presume you know them. Seek professional advice. A tool that I use with my clients to do this is the Keep Thinking Big Leadership Assessment. To see an abstract of this report click HERE.

The Advantages of a Strategic Plan

A key element to my business coaching with my clients, is to look a strategic planning.

There are many advantages to investing the time and resources to developing a strategic plan:

• Allows you and your team to make better strategic decisions because everyone’s on the same page.
• Encourages you and your team to focus on the future and make decisions accordingly — to be proactive instead of reactive.
• Allows your organisation to respond to change faster and more efficiently.
• Reduces uncertainty among your team and even among your customers.
• Fosters better coordination among your team because everyone can pull in the same direction (because everyone knows what that direction is).
• Offers you a chance to get input from your team and even your customers. Taking time away from the day-to-day to gather their opinions can be invaluable to your overall operation.

Do You Need a Strategic Business Plan?

If you think you could benefit from a strategic business plan and what is needed to put one together, you can download my ‘What to consider when developing a business strategy’ – click HERE.

I take a deep dive into the following areas;

• Company Mission Statement
• Values
• Vision
• Business Plan
• Industry and Competitive Analysis
• Marketing Planning
• Team Building and Communication Strategies
• Tracking Progress and Measurement Strategies.

What must be remembered is that the fundamental principle of an effective strategy is the awareness of what to do and what not to do.

This leads to increasing success in life and in business. Being aware of where to invest time for maximum results can determine the success of a business.

The word strategy can be overused at times and not fully understood. Strategy planning is about taking a very deep dive into planning and then wisely deciding on what to do and what not to do.

For a strategy to be effective, it needs to have a timeline, it should also include relevant key performance indicators known as your KPI’s. These are going to be very important to track progress being made. It may also highlight tweaks that may need to happen along the way.

Just because you have a plan – does not mean you have a strategic plan.

The more you can put in at the front end of planning will enable you to see this from a big picture perspective and then allow wisdom to guide you in your decisions of how and when your plan will be accomplished.

Unfortunately, too many plans fail because of a lack of strategic thinking and planning. This hinders projects, development of a company, teams and even career progression. Therefore to have a business growth consultant come in and to work with the senior team in designing a strategic plan can have huge benefits for the company.

They will see things that you don’t see, asking insightful questions that can save a huge amount of time and revenue, as you advance towards your plan. Lack of wisdom, key questions and strategic thinking often leads to the failure of a plan.

BUT – Most of All, It Takes Action

I encourage you to act now. Don’t let your vision leak by delaying — even a pandemic. Instead, take control of the Controllables  — the things you can do today to transition your team into greater effectiveness.

One of the best ways to do this is with 1-1 business coaching. I work with a select group of businesspeople around the world who are seeking to close the gaps between expectations and results — those that want to take a big step forward in the success of their company and team. If that is you, click here to find out more about 1-1 coaching.