Vision
A vision answers significant questions, those that can only be
answered by action:
What do I want to accomplish in my life?
What do I want to look back on having achieved?
If there were one great task I could accomplish immediately,
as if by magic, what would it be?
What have I always wanted to do – that nagging thought that
seems grandiose but will not go away?
What am I drawn towards doing?
These questions can give you the main purpose of your journey.Leaders start with the vision that they think is achievable and
worthwhile.
A fully elaborated and worked out and carefully worded
vision is often called a ‘mission statement’. To refine the
vision into a mission statement you have to ask some critical
questions, whether you are developing an organizational
mission or a personal one:
Where are we going?
How will we get there?
What do we need to succeed?
What are our guiding values?
What will we measure for success and how will we measure it?
How long will it take?Once you believe your vision to be achievable and practical,
once you have your road map, you need to share it. How do
you do this? You can write it down, you can talk to others, but
the most powerful way of all is to live it and the values it em-
bodies. Action can express a vision much better than words.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist and poet, put
it this way: ‘What you are doing speaks so loud I can’t hear
what you say.’ People will always judge you first on what you
do, then by what you say. Artists, designers and musicians all
lead mainly by what they do.
To fully use your vision and share it with others you will at
some point, however, have to find words that capture it in a
clear and inspiring way. Inevitably the words will be less
Starting the Journey 13