directedfocus

It is no secret that businesses which perform the best are those with visionary leadership.

So what is a vision or for that matter what's a goal, a mission or a forecast?

All these words are bandied around by many who claim to have the "secret" of success but do you know what they mean and how they apply to your business and its future?

Coming to terms with what the future can be is really important for individuals and the businesses that support them, their staff and their respective families.

The first way of looking at things can be found in dreams. A dream is a visual thing without a timeframe. Dreams can be likened to visual wishes that we create for ourselves.

The second way is via goals which are pictures which are graphically demonstrable in a time frame.

If you have a goal, for example to own a BMW by the end of the year, and you commit yourself to it you will have that car. So you achieve the finite result by having a goal within a given time frame. The only difficulty with that is, along with the new car, you may have also have got diabetes and high blood pressure. What's that new car worth now? Having a finite goal to go for is somewhat unsatisfactory.

The third way is a vision. A vision isn't a picture, it's a feeling an experience that you project in a timeframe. Yes it's an intangible thing but your mind doesn't know that.

People who have a vision go a long way in life; small businesses that have a visionary leader or owner go along way, as well.

Lots of people think they are leaders because they are very good at operating or doing things, but often they find their leadership is produced by salaries or status or army style promotion and has nothing to do with their personal qualities.

There are two other words mission and forecasts which are bandied around relating to creating a future for ourselves and our businesses.

Forecasts are guesstimates, predictions or calculations, based on past events, aiming to foretell future events.

A forecast is therefore a prediction of what the future holds using external information which can sometimes be self fulfilling. Assume that the forecasters say that this year there will be a major recession and that many businesses will fail; as a small business owner you believe that forecast, then chances are your business will fail. The decisions you make will be predicated on that external event and in your blind acceptance it will be come self fulfilling.

Business missions are those statements that you see in frames on office walls setting out what the business stands for, most likely forgotten, and never acted on.

What's the point of having a mission then?

Actually, the vision statement is about what the future will look like if the mission is achieved.

Creating the future you want for your business, yourself and your family requires you to get clear about answering the question … what it is that you really want?