Leadership teams at small businesses don’t have a problem doing the work that needs to be done – working hard is a part of what they love. It’s not the fighting that’s so difficult.
The “fighting” – the working hard – is the hallmark of a Stage 1 company as it focuses on its own survival. But a Stage 1 company usually has little need for a vision of what its future looks like. First, the team is mostly reacting in the moment to customers and often shifting its business model substantially, so a vision is hard to pin down. Second, a Stage 1 team is small, so they are constantly in battles together and are forced to be on the same page.
But the question we pose in the title of this article – what’s worth fighting for – becomes important as a company moves from Stage 1 to Stage 2 because there are more staff and more customers, and they will head in different directions without a unifying vision.
Also, in Stage 2 there are many more options open to the business and resources available to pursue those options, and the leadership team needs a framework to guide its decisions.
So, what does a good vision look like? There are two important elements for Stage 2 companies:
- First, the vision should create buy-in and alignment. Simply having the CEO develop a vision and tell everyone what it is does not accomplish the objective. The value of the vision is in its influence on day-to-day actions, and to get that value, the process of developing the vision needs to create buy-in throughout the company.
- Second, the vision should be specific because that specificity is what guides day-to-day actions.
Most visions we see have few specifics. Instead, they say something like, “We will maintain our industry-leading products while serving the needs of our customers and developing our employees.” A statement like that is great to communicate, and the process of getting everyone to recognize those goals is quite valuable. But a general vision like that does a poor job of showing leaders and staff what they should think about when they make decisions.
If you are a second stage company and don’t have a vision, you would make your life substantially better and improve the performance of your business if you developed one. If you already have a vision, see whether everyone in the company is committed to it and whether it has the specificity to help your leaders make decisions.
