Vision, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, can be defined as the faculty or ability to see. It can also be defined as the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom.
People think about vision in different ways:
“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”
“Effective leaders help others to understand the necessity of change and to accept a common vision of the desired outcome.”
“A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.”
“We think to small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.”
“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.”
I equate vision to expansion and growth. The clarity that comes with knowing how things should be enables you to see what needs to be done in order to bring your vision to life. Being able to see across multiple perspectives and organizational structures gives you the power to align people, resources, and time in order to create what’s next.
Consistent action is required to transform a fleeting thought or mental concept into reality. This is not unlike a sculptor working with marble, with small consistent chips and taps in the right spots at the right time that eventually contribute to an overall goal being realized.
I find that people have the toughest time with knowing where to start or what to do next. Even if you have a faint sense of what needs to be done, take the first step and see what happens. If that doesn’t work, then take another, and keep pushing. This is how change is created–small consistent steps over time.
