Small Business Today Magazine MAY 2014 CUSTOMIZED REAL STATE SERVICES | Page 20

EDITORIALFEATURE

Visioning Scope-

Applying Vision toward
Your Organization’s Progress
By Hank Moore, Corporate Strategist™

V

ision is a realistic picture of what
is possible. Visioning is the process
where good ideas become something
more. It is a catalyst toward long-term
evaluation, planning, and implementation. It
is a vantage point by which forward-thinking organizations ask: “What will we look
like in the future?” “What do we want to
become?” “How will we evolve?”

7 Steps toward Strategic Vision:

 1. Analyze the company’s environment,
resources, and capabilities. Determine
where the Big Picture existed before,
if it did at all. Crystallize the core business in terms of viabilities to move
successfully forward to some discernible point.
2. Clarify management values. Usually,
management has not yet articulated
its own individual values, let alone
those of the organization.This process
helps to define and develop value systems to create success.
3. Develop a Mission Statement. It is
the last thing that you write and not
an end in itself. In reality, the Mission
Statement is rewritten several times
as the planning process ensues. The
last draft of the statement will be an
executive summary of collective ideas
and works of the Visioning Team.
4. Identify strategic objectives and goals. I
ask clients to do so without using the
words: “technology,” “sales,” and “solutions.” Businesses fail to grow because
they get stuck in buzz words and trite
phrases that they hear from others.
Technology is a tool which feeds into
tactics.  Sales is one of dozens of tactics which an organization must pursue. Tactics feed into objectives which
feed into goals which feed into strategy which feed into vision.

5. Generate select strategic options. There
are many ways to succeed and your
game plan should have at least five viable options. When the Visioning Program matures and gets to its second
generation, you’ll find that winning formulas stem from a hybrid of the original strategic options.  Creative thinking
moves the company into the future. It
never rehashes its earliest ideas.
6. Develop the vision statement. It will
be action-oriented and speak from
the facts as well as from the passion
of company leaders. It will include a
series of convictions why your organization will work smarter, be its best,
stand for important things, and be accountable.
7. Measure and review the progress. By
benchmarking activities and accomplishments against planned objectives,
then the company has a barometer of
its previous phase and an indicator of
its next phase.

7 Biggest Visioning Challenges:

1. Settle the organization’s short-term
problems. Otherwise, they will fester
and grow.  Many organizations fail
because they deny the existence of
problems, proceed to place blame
elsewhere or hope against hope that
things will miraculously get better.
Unsolved problems turn into larger
roadblocks to growth.
2. Never let the vision lapse. Keep the
vision grounded in reality through
benchmarked measurements. Keep
the communication open and the
people will keep the enthusiasm alive.
Renew the vision every five years with
a formal process and include newer
employees. Stay on top of the latest in
business strategies. Therefore, you will

18 SMALL BUSINESS TODAY MAGAZINE [ MAY 2014 ]

have the advantage over emerging
competitors.
3. Effecti