Do you feel that your business is stagnating? Or are you reeling from changes? For example, look at what happened to Twitter after Elon Musk took over and changed the business plan. Massive layoffs and changes in the work culture sent people and advertisers reeling.
I am not suggesting you will ever go through the kind of tremendous upheaval of Twitter. On a much smaller scale,
- Are you failing to come up with fresh, innovative ideas to improve your business or respond to marketplace changes?
- Are the ideas you do have not leading you in a useful direction?
It may be that you’ve lost or need to refresh your vision. A business plan can help you regain your perspective.
You Had It Once with Your First Business Plan
Entrepreneurs are people with visions. We identify a need in our area of the business or service industries and are inspired to make a unique contribution to answer this need. This vision fuels those who successfully navigate the first rocky period of their businesses and guides them to greater accomplishments.
Changes in circumstances, in markets, and in personnel require refining the vision.
A similar vision often motivates those hired by large companies as innovators. They have exciting ideas about how to transform their niche and are eager to put them into practice.
But practical and technical problems may smother an entrepreneurial vision. Many factors including chain-of-command problems, personnel issues, and the resistance of conservative administrators may stifle an innovator’s enthusiasm.
When that happens, the entrepreneur or innovator needs to return to the drawing board, or, in this case, the writing board of a business plan.
You Can Recreate Your Vision
Without a compelling vision of where you want to go, you can’t write a practical business plan that will guide you to that goal. To have a “what,” you need to have a “why.”
Quest stories are very popular in mythology and fiction. The heroes have burning purposes that enable them to overcome major obstacles and a clear vision of their version of the Holy Grail.
To get yourself into quest mode, you have to write down your vision. You can read a written version as often as daily to renew your enthusiasm and determination to realize your quest.
As an editor, I might write: “I do this work to help my clients realize the power of their stories and their voices. I am committed to helping them bring their stories to life and to print so that others will benefit from reading it.”
That’s a brief vision statement. It has lots of room for enlargement and enhanced detail. For example, I might add that I network with those in my field and in building structures for mutual support. Based on that addition, I can take practical steps to do this networking. I can list specific actions and a time frame.
You can envision, as well. You could write a scene in which you imagine meeting someone (you don’t have to be specific) who helps you with an aspect of your quest.
Vision Boards
The idea of making vision boards used to belong to the spiritual fringe, but it’s gone mainstream, as this article from The Oprah Magazine demonstrates.
If you don’t want to deal with glue and scissors, you can design your vision board virtually. This URL has links to web sites and vision-board-building apps.
Identify the key elements of your vision—this is one reason why it’s so important to put that vision in writing—and find images and text, including inspiring quotations, and assemble them in a design that’s compelling for you. Engaging in such a project not only brings your vision to life, you may come across images and ideas that give more breadth to your vision and provide you with new pathways to your goal.
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Whether you are an entrepreneur or a key player in a corporation, engage your team in your vision and have them co-create it. If it’s their vision, too, they will work effectively to make it happen.
Business plans are great on paper and made greater when the team works together to bring them to life.
Is writing a book part of your vision for your business, for sharing your hard earned insights? Let’s talk. Contact me through patiyer.com/contact and let’s explore how to turn your vision into a reality.
