Have you ever wondered what holds businesses back from growing? There are thousands of potential answers and it depends heavily on the business itself. For example, some businesses could be hindered by a lack of funds while others might struggle because of a lack of staff. Every business faces its own challenges, but when it comes to stagnant companies, there’s usually one source to blame; the leaders.
Business leaders tend to have a very relaxed and laid-back attitude toward their companies. There aren’t many business owners that will stress their business to its limits and constantly push for innovation. This is usually something that comes with a lot of risks and most companies aren’t willing to do this. Instead of trying to adopt new technologies and push for innovative new products, they’ll stick with what works and slowly observe the market.
This makes complete sense when you have thousands or even just hundreds of employees under your company. One small mistake could cause a large chunk of your team to suddenly become redundant, so you have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders when you’re in charge of a large company. However, that isn’t an excuse to stagnate.
Dreaming big relies on leaders to develop a business vision
Growing a company isn’t about having the right business skills, connections, or even staff. In fact, there’s something much deeper that needs to be present; a vision. Without a vision, businesses are essentially on autopilot and are directed by the data and statistics that are generated. You release a product iteration, see how customers react, then you invest in it if people like it. If it’s not popular, you move to the next iteration or see what your competitors are doing and then essentially copy them.
There’s a serious lack of originality in the world today and it doesn’t help when businesses fail to build a vision for their companies. If there’s no vision, there’s no inspiration and this leads to a lack of motivation among staff. As you can imagine, this can cause a huge number of long-term issues that will cause the foundation of a company to start cracking. Sooner or later, the business will be overtaken by more innovative companies that are willing to take risks and do new things. Even if those decisions aren’t popular with the public, the company is at least doing something different to disrupt the industry and put all eyes on them.
Having a business vision and being able to write it down as an inspirational mission statement can be surprisingly effective in helping businesses grow. Developing an entrepreneurial attitude starts with a can-do attitude, and the core of that stems from a vision for your business. It can be difficult to dream big and think of grand ideas, but it all starts with your personal motivations and sources of inspiration. Read more books, speak to more people, and even watch more films. Constantly expose yourself to new ideas and themes to inspire yourself. Those that constantly seek new horizons will ultimately be the pioneers of the next business generation.
Writing a vision statement that is easy to understand
If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to write a vision or mission statement that your staff can understand. Having a vision in your head isn’t enough–it needs to be on paper, in a video, or any other consumable media format for both employees and customers.
Here are a few tips on how to write a vision statement:
- Think about what you want your business to achieve in five to ten years.
- Always talk about the current status of your business and how you plan for things to improve or grow.
- Understand that your entire team needs to be on the same page, so show them respect and include them in your statement.
- Make sure it aligns with your current business values and goals.
- Don’t use complex jargon or terms–keep it as simple and easy-to-understand as possible.
But there’s a difference between dreaming big and being foolish
It’s easy for someone to dream so big that their ideas eclipse reality. Anyone can say that they want a business that makes trillions and is popular across the world, but how exactly do they plan to achieve that?
One of the most difficult things about having a vision and dreaming big is that you need to draw a fine line between reality and fantasy. Sure, technology such as self-driving cars may have been bordering fantasy in the past, but there was always a thread of possibility that we were grasping at. We just needed the investors to pour money into the idea and the technology to develop it. As we pour money into research and development, it unlocks more ideas and concepts that we can use to develop our ideas and create truly generation-defining products and services.
Grounding your business in realistic developments for the future
Many visionaries are flawed in the sense that they can push unrealistic expectations. We’re all guilty of this at some point and there’s always a fantasy that we want to chase. However, we need to come back down to earth eventually and start thinking about realistic developments that we can aim for. This is where it helps to start building long and short-term goals to help you keep track of your progress, but to also ground you in what’s possible for your business and with your resources.
There are many situations where we can propose something that is seemingly impossible now but could definitely be feasible in the near future. For example, industrial building construction is a massive expense and a long-term project that can take multiple years. Depending on what’s being built, you can’t expect to see an immediate return on a construction project even once it’s constructed. As such, we need to start thinking about long-term ideas and the potential costs involved. That way, we can plan for realistic growth scenarios and execute them with far more accuracy.
