Does your enterprise have a vision for success? Vision Conversations Part -1

‘A vision without a plan is just a dream. A plan without a vision is just drudgery…but a vision with a plan can change the world.’ - Ancient Proverb

You wouldn’t set out on a journey in your car without knowing where you were going, what is the condition of the road, weather conditions at the destination if it is long journey, would you be able to meet your objective of your journey. Even when you are planning a weekend camping trip if you find that the destination camp site has rain forecast then you would either change the camp location or invest the time in doing some other activity.  Why did you do that? Why not just pack the bags and leave? You did the ground work because you had a clear vision of the weekend camping trip. 

1. You knew list of activities you intended to do
2. You knew how much time you were going to spend on various activities 
3. You knew what activities were not feasible in your weekend plan
4. You had identified couple of extra activities that you would do if you could compete the original list of things before time.
5. You even had a alternate plan just in case one of the activity in your original plan could not be completed - For example what would you do if the planned para-sailing activity would not be possible due to poor wind conditions.
6. In short you visualized the entire weekend trip from beginning to end, visualized each step, each task and the end result of each task and the back-up plan and that's is why your trip was a success. 
7. Now looks at it the other way, you have visualized the entire trip but you did not bother to check the weather conditions and facilities at the camp location. When you reach destination you find it is raining like cats and dogs and it is not practical to setup the camp so all your plans go for a toss. You had a great vision, with attention to details but your planning was flawed and so you could not achieve all the goals of your camping trip. So  vision without plan is like para-jumping without a checking your parachute! If the parachute has a hole you are done deal!

Well if we could spend some time to create a Vision for our weekend trip why would we not spend similar time to create a Vision for our important projects that decide the fate of our career or the fate of our company?  You agree? Great! So I hope we are on the same page and we agree with the old proverb that - A vision without a plan is just a dream. A plan without a vision is just drudgery, mindless hard-work with no guarantee of success. And a vision with a plan can change the world! I have seen many projects fail because of over zealous but over confident leaders who did not spend enough time on planning or started their planning without clear vision. In the next post lets discuss how do we go about Visionizing our projects. Same principles but at a larger and more complex scale.