When you start out your career, when managing teams, or when launching a business it’s good to have a Vision for what your success will ultimately look like in each of those endeavors. At first you might not know what you want out of your life’s work. You might just be happy to break into your field of interest and live there for 30 years. But eventually you will want to reach your potential and that will mean growing beyond what you could imagine when you first start out. You will want to teach others what you know so your position’s, team’s, organization’s legacy will outgrow you. That’s when it’s time to progress your Vision!
Always Learn & Grow Your Vision
The world around you will constantly change. You will need to adapt and take a dynamic approach with your business endeavors to make the most out of opportunities and challenges, especially if you want to change the world or even just your workplace. If you are wise, you will envision yourself, your teams, and your organizations as having a growth mindset willing to continually seek after learning and growth to progress together and beyond. Everyone comes full circle in their career and retires at some point. When you have a growth mindset you don’t want to just cash out, you will make things better in your workplaces then the state you found it in and position it for something better. You will change the status quo and find clarity for your Vision of what the future can be!
Make Sure Your Vision is Clear
Things rarely go exactly according to plan, but the more prepared you are the better chance you have of forecasting success. When you first start into a new endeavor take the time to test the waters and learn what’s going well and what is not in observing others who have worked toward similar feats. You may not have a crystal ball. You may not be able to see the future. You may not be able to manifest success just by thinking about it. But those are poor excuses. You can redefine your Vision as it becomes more clear project by project as to what is possible. You can create a clear path and milestones to the success you see are possible. And great things are possible with an exponential effect that starts with one clear Vision!
Do More Than Execute Your Vision
There is a book on my desk titled, “The Execution Factor”, by Kim Perell. It’s not my favorite book. I don’t take exception with the concept of the title itself. It’s the subtitle, “The One Skill that Drives Success” that I disagree with. There is no one factor or skill that leads to business or life success. I came across this book at the Silicon Slopes Summit in Utah where a lot of technology companies and CEOs get together to share the tricks of the trade with business professionals. While I definitely believe in hard work and that execution can be a factor that sets workers apart, I don’t believe it’s the one skill that makes executives a cut above. To manage a successful business is similar to the project management where there are 5 process groups (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing), not just one.
There are many hard workers who have worked long hours without the same fortunate results. Unfortunately, I felt like the summit gave a glamourized version of the benefits of making work your life 24/7. Operating a business may take you away from other successful endeavors in life that happier people cherish more, only found in real life relationships outside of work. In this day of information and automation we should learn to work smarter, not harder so we can support life (and family success in the home) rather than life support work. Besides we, humans, can use our unique experience, knowledge, and interpersonal skills to reach our dreams as teams, far better than we can do anything alone.
There are just a lot of factors that go into individual, team, and organizational success, which I define as a life of happiness, but if you define success wrong to begin with you’ll never achieve real success. The greatest vision for the human family is our progression, always learning as God’s children, and work is a big part of that, but loving others and becoming better together as people is a more important outcome and loftier view than any individual achievements or career heights. Our Visions should be the starting point to inspire and unite humanity to be better together to win as one team in our organizations. If your Vision is off, then your success will be limited and your execution of the wrong Vision will not matter!
Organize Project Management into Your Vision
The best way to manage a lot of unknowns and multiple factors is by organizing your change project management efforts. If you are an entrepreneur you will wear many hats and you will want to achieve a proof of concept that provides a little cashflow. You may need to hire project managers for individual projects in areas that are not your expertise or you don’t have time for but have money enough to invest in.
At a minimum any business needs at least someone to develop a product or service, someone to market and/or sell the product or service, and someone to fulfill customer orders and provide the product or service. In the case of an entrepreneur that one person must often do it all just to get it off the ground and keep it going.
If separate individuals, they may form the makings of an organizational management team or steering committee that considers the business case for projects and products or services that the business needs and then collaborate, coordinate, and communicate as one to work together to produce results. They may each also wear many hats until functional teams are formed under them in their areas of expertise and sponsors and projects are designated to take the organization to higher ground. Your Vision should have an idea where project management comes in.
The Vision of Project Management
A project manager may be contracted to take on areas in that persons specialty. But organizational project managers are like entrepreneurs in that they are a jack of all trades and a master of none, except the craft of project managing. Owners want to move away from being Operators. Who better than project managers to take projects off your plate? When your Vision of what your business can become calls for a functional management structure is a great time to form a project management structure alongside it, for all the projects that arise outside normal business functional activities. You might want a project manager before that. Your Executive Assistants can be trained up to be Project Coordinators and then Project Managers as you grow. Get them into training and pay for their certifications if they desire to expand their career. Their growth will pay off in ways that will afford your company to grow. Or you can hire a project manager full-time, who has experience elsewhere, preferably at the middle management level, to be a process improvement specialist. Whatever form it takes, you should always be working on projects that improve how you do things in your company, if you are going to grow and work toward the fulfillment of your Vision.
Your Team’s Vision(s)
Your company will depend on pulling together like-minded individuals who want to see the same success for your organization as your visionary leader wants to see. In today’s world of work there is not a lot of loyalty from the company or from the individuals. Now more than ever it is important to have projects that unite and align your team, their Visions, and your Vision. In many companies, many workers do not benefit directly from the product or service you provide to the world. And that’s okay, as long as they benefit indirectly. The workers you want to keep will be those who are continually progressing their own Vision while progressing toward your company’s Vision. Projects are a great way to keep these progress driven individuals engaged in your Vision and be able to pay them what they are worth, because they are progressing their Vision, finding fulfillment by learning and growing in new areas, and getting paid better when they are providing greater value to you.
Continually Improving Toward Your Vision
When the projects are done hindsight is 20/20. But don’t judge your work on all the missed opportunities. Learn from them. Record your new knowledge. Share it with your teams. Keep it on file for similar projects to come. Celebrate your successes, especially your newfound knowledge. Build off of it. Your company’s Vision will take on a life of its own and grow to be something greater than any one individual can hope to expect if your team is continually learning and applying better understanding with each new project.
Storyboard PM Solution
I founded Storyboard PM to integrate organizational project management as a business solution that gets and keeps our business teams on the same page to progress our work together.
Let’s lift organizational and project management maturity from one level to the next on the way to reaching our Visions as successful individuals, teams, and organizations.