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The mind is like a parachute—it has to be open to work.
In summary, the four fundamental beliefs are as follows: 1. You must build and maintain a true leadership team. 2. Hitting the ceiling is inevitable.
3. You can only run your business on one operating system. 4. You must be open-minded, growth-oriented, and vulnerable.
DO THEY SEE WHAT YOU ARE SAYING?
most entrepreneurs can clearly see their vision. Their problem is that they make the mistake of thinking that everyone else in the organization sees it too.
Entrepreneurs must get their vision out of their heads and down onto paper. From there, they must share it with their organization so that everyone can see where the company is going and determine if they want to go there with you.
create a clear picture of where the company is going and how it will get there.
electronic version of the V/TO can be downloaded free at www.eosworldwide.com/vto.
What is vision? It’s clearly defining who and what your organization is, where it’s going and how it’s going to get there. It should be simple to articulate your vision, because it’s probably already in your head.
What are your core values? 2. What is your core focus? 3. What is your 10-year target? 4. What is your marketing strategy? 5. What is your three-year picture? 6. What is your one-year plan? 7. What are your quarterly Rocks? 8. What are your issues?
try to answer all eight questions in a full one-or two-day off-site session.
core values? They are a small set of vital and timeless guiding principles for your company. A good rule of thumb is to limit them to somewhere between three and seven.
core values define your culture and who you truly are as people.
Once they’re defined, you must hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize people based on these core values. This is how to build a thriving culture around them.
By not defining what your values are, you have no way of knowing who believes in them and who doesn’t.
they are the first step to forming your vision.
what drives our passion, what is at our core,
Your core values should become a guiding force in your organization and should be incorporated into your hiring process.
You will find that your hiring success ratio will increase if you evaluate applicants’ core values before their skill.
In short, it doesn’t matter what your core values are as much as it does that you’ve clearly defined, communicated, and are living them as an organization. Only then can you truly surround yourself with the people who will prepare your organization for growth.
Businesses can easily become distracted by opportunities that are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Your job as a leadership team is to establish your organization’s core focus and not to let anything distract you from that.
Find your core focus, stick to it, and devote your time and resources to excelling at it.
While a new idea may look like a no-brainer on paper, it’s simply not worth doing if it’s not a part of your core focus.
Jim Collins puts it in his bestseller Good to Great, “You have to figure out what you’re genetically encoded to do.” That’s a vital point. The combination of your talents and passions combined with your leadership creates something unique that no other company has, and that something is your core
focus. You must uncover what it is.
First, you and your leadership team should define, with absolute clarity, your two truths: your reason for being and your niche.
With your niche and your organization’s reason for being crystal clear, you now have a core focus. Once your core focus is clear, you’ll need to stay true to it. If a new business opportunity doesn’t fit, don’t do it.
Illuminate your core focus,
Once your core focus is clear, your people, processes, and systems can be put in place to drive it with consistency.
What is your 10-year target?
who can’t tell me what their number one goal is.
organizations that have endured for decades share another common practice: They all set massive 10- to 25-year goals.
having “a long-term vision so daring in its scope as to seem impossible.”
“You must focus on ends, rather than means.
Once you do that, it’s almost as if you magnetize yourself to the ways and means involved in the methodology for getting there. Solutions begin to appear. Answers come to you.
your 10-year target must be specific and measurable so that there can’t be any gray areas.
create a laser-sharp focus
A focused effort will enable you
It will become the foundation upon which you create all future
create a growing snowball
You need to settle on three qualities that will truly make your company unique to the ideal customer.
If you believe in your Three Uniques, and you believe they matter to your ideal customer, you should never apologize for them.
A guarantee is your opportunity to pinpoint an industry-wide problem and solve it.
With the first four sections of the V/TO complete, you now know who you are, what you are, where you’re going, and what marketing strategy you’re going to use to get there.
With the three-year picture clearly in mind, you can more easily determine what you have to do in the next 12 months to stay on track.
You’re painting a picture of the destination, not discussing every obstacle along the way.
Can you imagine how different those individual future views must have been? They can’t coexist in the same company without creating complexity, confusion, and frustration.
Measurables give everyone scope and size. Every organization has one or two very specific figures that are a telltale sign of the size of the organization.
each person on the leadership team should verbalize his or her vision for his or her individual role in the organization in that time frame. You’ll gain some interesting insights into people’s motivations and help get everyone’s expectations in line.
