Starting the Journey 9becomes hard and you meet unforeseen obstacles and
guardians.
The cave changes while you move, you create new chal-
lenges, new pitfalls and new shortcuts by your advance.
Sometimes you have to light another flare. You may be
drawn deep into the cave, through fantastic landscapes. You
may travel to the end of cul-de-sacs, or be distracted by su-
perficially attractive but worthless trinkets at the side of the
road, or even discover places you want to stay, but whatever
happens you are committed to the journey, to going for-
ward. You do not go back.
The same process powers our vision of a better life or a
more competitive business. A leader always leads somewhere,
even when the journey is inspired by a desire to get out of
trouble. For example, 1992 was a disastrous year for the
American retailer Sears, Roebuck and Company. They made
a net loss of nearly four billion dollars, most of it in mer-
chandising, on sales of just over 50 billion dollars. Sears was
turned around spectacularly the following year by Arthur
Martinez, who was head of the merchandising group, and in
1995 became CEO of the whole company. Starting from a
simple vision statement of what was called ‘the three Cs’ –
‘making Sears a compelling place to shop, a compelling
place to work and a compelling place to invest’ – the
company went from the net loss of four billion dollars to a
net income of 752 million dollars the following year, a sales
increase of more than nine per cent. Of course the vision
alone did not cause the turnaround – it was what they did,
suggested, fuelled and guided by that vision. Vision guides ac-
tion. Action changes the world in the direction of your vision.
There are no guarantees on the journey, however. Some-
times vision turns out to be a trick of the light, an illusion.
What looked like a doorway turns out to be a dead end when
you get close to it. Or the vision stands real and robust
enough, but the leaders can’t find the way, their strategy was
mistaken and unfortunately there was only one chance.
Sears took it and made it work, Apple computers did neither.
Never it seems, has a company with so much good will