Vision Gaps

Most entrepreneurs have glaring gaps in their vision for their company’s future.

In running creative visualisation exercises with entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed something striking: some entrepreneurs have clarity on the long term vision, others on the short term vision – but very rarely on both.

I’ve noticed two types of vision blind spots:

• Time based: under indexing on long term clarity or short term clarity
• Function based: under indexing on clarity related to certain business functions or aspects (e.g. customer proposition vs. team composition)

There are struggles resulting from each type of blindspot:

• Visionary entrepreneurs with more long term clarity often feel overwhelmed with options, with no clear direction for next steps
• Executor entrepreneurs with more short term clarity are often limited to incremental changes, with no clear direction on how to take the business to the next level
• Entrepreneurs with functional blindspots have often not given enough thought to crucial aspects of their business and are hampered by these unseen constraints

Why is it important to recognise the gaps in your vision? Because filling in those gaps is a high impact quick win:

• You may think of yourself as a visionary entrepreneur, but have you ever considered that improving execution is as simple as applying that vision to a shorter time horizon?
• Similarly, you may know your skill is in execution, but have you ever even attempted an exercise in long term vision creation?

Transformational change is regularly required in life and business: you hit a local maximum and growth stalls until you gain the necessary shift in perspective to move forward again.

You need clarity on all aspects of your vision to make these transformational changes: without a long term vision, you’re rushing forward aimlessly; without a short term vision, your forward progress is haphazard and staggered at best.

Q: Where are the gaps in your vision?