Creating a Vision

During the previous blog I talked about the four steps to successful leadership. The first step that we talked about was "Creating a Vision." Humor me for a little while as a share a few thoughts on creating a vision.

What is a vision? A vision is simply an idea of where you want to be in the future. For the author it is the finished book. For the runner it is the goal at the end of the race. For an NFL team it might be the Vince Lombardi Trophy for winning a SuperBowl. A vision is not complicated. But, it is very important.

If it is so simple why do some organizations struggle with it? Sometimes a team struggles with vision because their destination is really hard to put into words or pictures. Maybe they're going somewhere they have never been before. Sometimes a group struggles with a vision because it isn't weighty enough. The why question isn't answered. Why should I make this business profitable? What's the big deal?

Some questions to ask yourself about vision: What do we want to accomplish? What imprint do we want to leave on the world? Why do we want to do this? Can we do this? It might be difficult for me to get buy in from a church start team if my vision is to "Win the Super Bowl."

I'm probably getting a little ahead of myself. So much of a successful vision comes in the next steps of leadership, communicating and transferring vision. Creating a vision is often the easy part. But, there are some important things to consider to make sure your vision is clear. Clear for you. Clear for others.

Recently I read this blog where Tony Morgan interviewed Will Mancini, the founder and Clarity Evangelist of Auxano about having a clear vision. I think the most salient piece of information I got from this interview was his "vision framing question." The question is "What can your church do better than 10,000 churches?" I think that is a great place to start. It helps you really think about your organizational strengths and passions. It is clarifying too. It keeps you from just photocopying someone else's brilliant vision. Maybe what they do doesn't fit your team. A great idea for one may not be for everyone. So, vision may start with a little self discovery huh?

Another helpful resource is Andy Stanley's Visioneering.  He reminds us that vision is at it's heart a solution to a problem that must to be solved. What problem does your vision solve? Does anyone else care about this problem?

Both of these questions start with the "what." So, vision is the summary of several questions.

Where do we want to end up?
Who are we? (Our vision has to fit)
What are we going to do

But I think the most important question's are how and why. That will probably be a good blog for next time. "Moving from the what to the how and the why."