The Vision Setting Process

One powerful way to celebrate 2011 and get ready for 2012 is to follow this simple 4 step process:

1. Appreciate Your Successes: review what went well in the previous year and celebrate your successes
2. Unleash Your Imagination: step aside from what you think is possible, and create you life as if there were no boundaries!
3. Create Your Vision: move from your ideal fantasy vision of what you’d love to create to a concrete description of exactly what you plan to accomplish in the next year
4. Validate and Commit: celebrate your vision for this year and the years ahead. Validate that this vision is what you actually want to achieve – and are prepared to commit to.

Each step in this process creates the energy and momentum for the next.

As we reflect over the year and appreciate our successes, this brings to mind our strengths so that we can build on them – and puts us in the right state of mind for vision setting. What were some of your successes or ‘wins’ for 2011? Just write them in the comment field

This leads us naturally to the next step, which is to consider what our life would ideally be like, if there were no constraints. How would you create your life and business if there were no obstacles? What would you do?  What would you consider important?

Next we return to what we actually want to plan for and create. What is your vision in 5 years time? In 1 years time?

Finally, we reflect on the vision. How does it feel. Is there anything you’d change? Is it something you will commit to?

Download The Complementary Vision Setting Workbook

If you are an entrepreneur or own a business, I have created a complementary workbook and series of coaching emails for the vision setting process described above. Just download the template and follow the steps and you’ll create a powerful vision for 2012. The registration process requires your email address so it knows where to send the coaching emails.

She summarises her findings here in this video, and shows how we can learn from the great speeches and presentations to improve our speaking:

So, I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about just what exactly it means to “think differently” (and I list 12 ways to think differently below).  The meaning of ‘think differently” is not as simple as it sounds!

In the middle of thinking about what it means to think differently, I stumbled across Wikipedia’s article on Apple Computer’s 1997 “Think Different” campaign.

The “Think Different” campaign was fascinating for several reasons, including that prior to this campaign most computer products were marketed in general computer magazines, but this campaign was a brand campaign that went well beyond the traditional outlets. In addition, there was no product placement in the advertisements.

Most striking of all though was that the campaign was based largely around a poem, “the Crazy Ones” written by Craig Tanimoto, a copywriter at Chiat/Day (the agency that produced the campaign). Here is the full version of the poem:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

You can see the poem in the television advertisement, which juxtaposes a voiceover of the poem with figures of iconic innovators and revolutionaries, people who committed to standing out, standing up, and who made made a difference.

The campaign is very clever, of course, because it made a brand association between Apple’s computer products and some of the most creative, innovative and influential minds of the 20th century. In all likelihood, when you see and hear the advertisement you identify and want to be one of these crazy ones, one of these innovators, one of these people changing the world.

But the advertising is also interesting because it explores who thinks differently – how people who “think different” can be geniuses or misfits or exceptional or stubborn, they might or might not fit in. But they make a difference. They do important work. And in doing so they change the world. And in 1997 Apple suggested subtly that the tool for people making this kind of difference is an Apple computer.

I have been thinking about 12 different ways that we can think differently. And the beauty is, in Apple’s 1997 poem and television campaign, we can see virtually all of them.

So here they are. 12 different ways to think differently:

1. Being a revolutionary – questioning the old ways of doing things
2. Being an innovator – creating new and powerful ways to do things
3. Being a creative – giving birth and expression to new and powerful ideas
4. Being a performer – pushing the boundaries and thinking in new ways that lead to improved results
5. Being a seeker – gaining a deeper and better understanding of the world
6. Being a visionary – having an expanded vision of what is possible and what is worthwhile
7. Being an independent – thinking independently for yourself
8. Being wise – gaining a different and informed perspective
9. Being a leader – having the courage to discover and and express your individual uniqueness
10. Being a change agent – leading people or groups through change
11. Being committed – committing to making a difference
12. Being authentic – discovering who you are, and having the courage to bring your true self to the world you live in

Jobs told us that we can’t always make sense of our life looking forward, it’s sometime only looking backwards that we can see the patterns in our life and how things are developing.

“… you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Jobs shared us how – unexpectedly – being fired from Apple in 1985 actually turned out to be a blessing, as it ushered in the greatest creative period in his life.

And Jobs spoke about how, given that everyone will die one day, we should make the most of each day here. We should be ourselves, and think for ourselves, and live our own lives.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

We should think for ourselves – and, thereby, think differently.

You can view the full commencement address in the video below, and Stanford also provide a full transcript of the speech.

She was telling me how a short while back she had been involved in a strategy planning session. During the session she had been filled with creative energy – mapping out her goals, deciding what she would accomplish, and detailing the exact steps that would take her there, and what she would have to do by which dates.

But subsequently, when she tried to execute the actions as she had laid them out in the plan, she felt like she was dragging her feet – she told me “it felt like moving through mollasses!” The plans that had seemed so exciting to her just a few days before didn’t seem to motivate her to take action.

Then her ‘inner voice’ spoke up and started asking “what is wrong with me”, and she started doubting: “maybe I won’t succeed, maybe I can’t do it!”.

It turned out that this had happened a few times, following different strategic planning sessions. Each time, during the session she was charged with creative energy. After the session it was hard to follow through and implement the actions.

Eventually, she found that she could get in to action – but not by following any of the actions or tasks laid out in the plan! She needed to invent new actions or tasks to engage herself and keep moving forward.

So naturally enough, when we caught up, she was wondering: what was going on?

I felt an immediate sense of recognition. I’ve been there too. And I’ve been thinking about this problem, and its solution, over the last 18 months.

So, what was going on?

My friend is highly creative. In her strategic planning sessions, she was excited about the possibilities, she was in the moment – the creative forces were moving her, and moving with her. There was a world of opportunity opening up, and decisions being made. She loved it! It drew on what she loved doing best. The strategic planning session was one of the highlights of her week, and of her month!

But then those decisions were made, and written down. And they were good. She had the plan, all she needed to do now was follow it.

And therein lay the problem. One of the core assumptions underlying traditional business planning is that you can create the strategic business plan, and then execute it. We spend maybe two days a year in an executive strategic planning retreat, and then we spend the rest of the year executing the strategy. Or we spend a day or two in a strategic planning session and then we only revisit and update the plans quarterly or monthly. We go quickly from a highly creative, strategic outlook, to a practical business-as-usual getting-it-done mindset. We go from 2 days working on the business, to 218 days working in the business. In short, we go from a highly creative period of planning, to an extended period of work.

In other words, all the creative, strategic activity we undertake is focused in and concentrated into just two days of planning. After that, we have work to do. We have a plan to follow. We don’t need to think. We don’t need to be creative. We just need to do it. 

And that’s not very exciting at all for the creative spirit who is running their own business or seeking professional challenges. The creative individual doesn’t get out of bed each day saying ‘what work do I have to do today?’. Instead, creative spirits get out of bed saying ‘what am I excited about creating, expressing, doing today?’ It’s a very different orientation.

With their work laid out for them for the year, and when to do it, and how to do it best, that creative spark can feel like it’s gone. That creative part of them is saying ‘well, what is there for me to do? What new creative directions or new ideas can I help with and get excited about’? So, the creative spirit disengages from the work – or, worse, it actively sabotages the work by creating new diversions and exciting side projects instead of working on executing the plan.

There has to be a better way!

And there is.

Rather than bunching all the creative work up in to two just days of strategic planning, the creative spirit is better served by making every day highly creative. So instead of working to define tasks and activities and schedules and deadlines, the creative spirit only seeks to set out the big picture vision – their choices about where they want to go – during strategic planning sessions.

Then, during the strategic planning session and afterwards, they just need to ask 3 simple questions:

1. Where am I now?
2. Where do I want to go?
3. How do I want to get there?

The creative spirit can ask those same questions during the strategic planning session, the day after the strategic planning session, or every morning of every business day throughout the year, and the end result is always the same – after asking these questions they tap right back in to that powerful creative spirit that knows exactly what it needs to do know and has the energy, passion and capabilities to get there.

That is a different way of strategy execution. It is a way that engages the creative spirit, it starts each day with energy and momentum. It allows for flexibility, for new decisions to be made on any day – and still progress strongly towards the vision and destination.

Of course, traditional business planning activities such as writing a business plan (complete with market research and cash flow projections and the whole works) are still very useful – because the thinking you undertake during the process helps you understand your business better and be better prepared for eventualities.

On a day to day basis though, I suspect the creative person is going to be better served by waking up and asking and answering the three strategically creative questions above than they would be by waking up and grabbing a copy of the business plan with attached notes from the schedule outlining what they need to be doing today.

This new orientation is something I try to build into my daily workflow. It works well for me.

My friend and colleague I mentioned above thinks this is great, it has changed her focus completely – and allows her to play to her strengths each day.

Are you a creative person? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you drop a comment here to let me know how and if this is useful for you. I never know how useful this is and whether this helps you unless you tell me, and so any comments are much appreciated!

Also, I think this message is really important for creative people, so I’d like to try to share this widely.

Do you know a creative person? Please send them a link and invite them to visit. I’d love to start some real discussion around this. Is this topic important? Do the three questions work as well for you and for other creative people as they have for me and for my friend?

 Do you have a website or blog? I’d love to share this message with creative people everywhere – particularly creative business people and creative professionals – so if you are happy to drop a link back to this page it would be much appreciated.


Lauchlan

Here are 5 powerful questions to help get your thinking started:

1. What frustrated you the most in your business in 2010?
2. What do you want to accomplish for your business in 2011?
3. What do you think you would need in order to double your business in 2011?
4. What strategies have you already tried to improve your business that worked, or that didn’t work?
5. What new things are you going to do in your business, starting 2011?

Answering these 5 questions can yield a lot of rich insights about directions to take for 2011.

If you are not yet running a business and want to, you can answer the same set of questions but shift the focus to being about “starting your business”.

If you feel brave, drop your answers here in the comments section for this post! There’s nothing like publicly declaring your goals to help kick-start you in to action and help keep you accountable!

Fantastic insights. In particular, Sivers highlights that the role of the first follower is almost as or more important than the leader for getting a movement started, that a leader needs to be prepared to stand out from the crowd and (initially) look silly, and that once the movement is well under way, everyone else joins because they don’t want to look silly by being left out!

I love it!

One of the hiccups though has been the technology.

Business Is Changing

10 years ago, best practice for getting a website online would have been to get a website laid out in a program like Dreamweaver and make it dynamic and interactive using a programming language like Cold Fusion or ASP.Net. And that’s the way many large companies still operate today.

Then open source came along. And people love free, so the open source community thrived and kept adding features that people wanted. Pretty soon, for small entrepreneurs, the best practice technology stack was something like

• A WordPress Blog
• A premium theme like Thesis to make it look and work better
• A range of WordPress plugins to make it work better
• Custom graphic design and coding (CSS, HTML, PHP) or a steep learning curve to learn these technologies because Thesis out of the box is not all that friendly to work with if you want to use it to make websites rather than just blogs
• A membership site plugin for WordPress to control who has access to which pieces of content such as video (after all you don’t want everyone on the web to see your premium training videos or old marketing videos)

Here’s what happens.

1. Facebook takes your profile details when you sign up to Facebook and enter your profile information. Behind the scenes, Facebook has an engine that crunches and analyses those details so that it can match Facebook advertisements to each individual user profile. 
2. What Tommy then does is apply a strategy he’s developed. First, he runs a Facebook advertising campaign. Facebook matches the advertisement with an appropriate Facebook demographic of people who are likely to be interested in the advertisements (they want to match advertisements with people who are really interested in the topic or offer so people buy more), and presents the advertisement to them in a sidebar. 
3. When the campaign finishes, Tommy then uses the Facebook engine to analyse or ‘reverse engineer’ the demographic and psychographic of the audience that Facebook has matched to the advertisement, to deliver clarity around the characteristics – the interests and dispositions of that group the advertisement was delivered to. Facebook yields powerful intelligence regarding the market demographic. This is delivered by the same engine that matches advertisements to the people likely to be interested in them.
4. This yields detailed information about the target audience that Tommy has learned how to analyse and synthesise, which can then be used to refine the marketing message and repeat the process.

In addition to running the marketing campaign, Tommy has found that Facebook is uniquely positioned to help you understand your target audience in a deeper and more detailed way.

If you have a product or service you or your organisation are marketing, this approach can be an invaluable way to gain a better understanding of your market. If you understand them better, you can serve them better.

Tommy is writing about this strategy on his blog, and is currently developing his online Facebook marketing training product Mind Hacking. If you are marketing or selling something, sign up to his email list (from his blog page) to hear more.