Small Business Growing

Archive for May, 2010

Your Business Vision: Get It Out So It Can Be Free! (Part 3)

We are working our way through a foundational set of ideas on crafting a vision for your business.

There is lots to talk about when it comes to your business vision.  Your inner sense of where the business is headed is something we as small business owners live with day to day.In this series, I am offering thoughts to stimulate your thinking on your own vision.  The vision for many small business owners can be something that stays inside their psyche.  But getting it out in the open can do great things for your business.

To get it out and “free” you don’t need a text book perfect vision, or something that you agonize over.  Just get something out there that you can begin to work with.

A down to earth working understanding of vision is simply the yet unrealized, but hoped for state that is what you aim to achieve for your business.

At its best, when you have done “due diligence” on your vision, it is your succinct statement of what you want the business to reach for…to become.  It is your commitment to the direction and destination that you are moving toward.

You may not have a formal written vision, but you did start the business with an idea of what you wanted it to become.  Your hopes and dreams may have included several different dimensions of your life…something better for your family, economic advancement, more creative opportunity to use your talents, or other things.

For many the “vision” was more of what they wanted to leave, rather than what they wanted to create.  Anyone who has worked in a dysfunctional organization can appreciate the feeling of wanting the freedom from the politics and other negative conditions that exist in typical organizational cultures.

All of those things are important, but your business vision summarizes the direction and future state of your business.

From “in your mind” to “out in public”
The vision is “in your mind,” and often not written, and maybe currently it is not part of a well tuned strategic plan, that serves as a road map to where you are going and how you will get there.

The work here is to let what is “in your mind” come out, so that it expresses your deepest ambitions and dreams for the future of your business, in a more explicit way.   When you work this process, it can take you to new places.

Please consider this:  the nicely worded statement of a wonderful future state is not the point.

Sure, that is good.  And if you have a poetic streak you can “wordsmith” something very nice.  But what is important is the internal impact of doing a little soul searching, and the external impact this searching has on your business.

Your vision can take may forms.  It can be:

•  a description of what the business will become

•  how it will be viewed by customers

•  how well it will perform, what it will achieve.

An inspirational quality, but don’t get hung up
The vision is usually cast in language that has inspirational quality.  Part of its intent is to move others to share your passion for something that is worthwhile and compelling.

But you are probably not a professional poet, so don’t worry about that part.  Do the work and you will get to something that is good and right for your business.

Some would argue for a vision that is “over the top” while others believe a vision should be absolutely measurable so that everyone will know it when it is achieved.  You decide what is right for you.

We will pick it up right at this point, next time.

And, if you business involves customer/client relationships, read about a simple tool that can help make those relationships powerful sources of repeat and referral business.  Or, click here and we’ll send you information.

Reconnect With The Visionary Who Started Your Business (Part 2)

Medium and large corporations spend a lot to help them define or refine their organization’s vision.

But if you are a small business owner, you may see “vision” as one of those slick “corporate” things senior managers do at nice retreat locations. 

Maybe you have been at those kinds of retreats at an earlier time in your career.  Great plans are formulated and lots of enthusiasm is generated, but after the retreat not much changes.  It happens this way at many, if not most, planning sessions.

As a small business owner you don’t have to go that route.  One of your great competitive advantages is not having a large bureaucracy that is seemingly change resistant.

You can define or reinvent your business vision, and then go about the work of bringing it into reality, step by step.

Many small business owners start with a vision.  But the realities of survival and growth, and just getting work done, take over.  The original inspiration can get lost.  The passion and sheer joy, (along with the terror!) of starting your own business, can become diminished or even get lost, and with it the first vision that got you airborne.

I’d like to suggest that we as small business owners always need a vision of where our enterprise is headed.  It is one of the most practical and powerful things you can do as a small business owner.  If your vision is alive and well…and absolutely real to you, day to day, please take this as encouragement to keep going.

But if that does not describe you, and if you are open to consider the role of vision, we hope this short series will be of help.  We are going will talk about vision and its role for small business owners, to include the “What?”, “Why?”, and “How?” of vision.

We’ll start with the “What?” of vision next time, but for now may I offer this challenge if you are in the frame of mind to take a second look at the Vision issue.

Do a reality check on the current status of your business vision.  Take just a little time to reflect on these questions:

• First, what is your vision of the business as you look out several years?

• How has the vision changed since you started the business?

• Do you need to refresh or rethink the “Vision” question?

• Is the “Visionary” who started your business (you) still going strong, or is it time to re-energize?

In the next part of this series, we’ll discuss perspectives on exactly what is a “Vision.”

Your Business Vision: You can – and should – do this! (Part 1)

Of all the things you can do to either start or grow your small business, defining a vision may be the most important. 

This series is for you if you either don’t have a written vision, or if you need to revise or reinvent it.

The idea of a vision scares off many small business owners.  It seems too intangible and impractical…like “nailing jello to the wall”….it can seem unrealistic or unattainable, and disconnected from the pressing realities of everyday business.

All understandable concerns.  But in this series I will offer the perspective that a vision is your most basic and necessary requirement.

Most business owners already have a vision, though it is often not written.  It is wrapped up in the dreams and hopes, and practical goals that provided the initial provocation to start the business.

But it often stays at that inner gut level and never is worked on and developed, extended, and refined into something that can be a powerful part of the business.

It is probably impossible to provide a single road map to a great vision, and we won’t presume to do that.  Each business has its own history, leadership, industry, challenges, and other distinctives.  In addition, there is the question of how you construct a vision that has buy-in from other team members, when you are more that a one person business.

What we hope to do is give you food for thought, along with a number of practical strategies to apply in your own way.

As a starting place, before we get into several action type steps that get very specific, I would ask you to go back and “locate” that initial motivation along with the dream that was part of your reason for starting the business.  Somewhere within all of the thoughts, feelings, and motivations that impelled you to start your business, there is your vision.

Maybe it will morph or even transform if you stay with this process.  Or maybe you will just add another level off depth to an already great vision.

On the other hand, maybe the really powerful vision for where your business is going is yet to be clarified.   We’d love for this series to be a provocation for great things yet ahead.

Whatever the case, don’t give in to the impulse to think of all of this as intangible or impractical.  Keep is simple, but that does not mean to keep it shallow.  If this is right to you, do some serious thinking, and as we move forward I will offer more practical moves to get the vision into a workable and actionable state.

And If you don’t have an established business, but are in the formative stage of making that happen, do the same thing.  We’ll pick up at this point with the next post in this series.