VISION
What is vision?
noun: Vi·sion /ˈviZHən/ the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom
We celebrate visionaries, such as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. They are famous entrepreneurs who’ve been able to translate a vision of the future into remarkable business success. With these examples, you'd be tempted to believe that being a visionary is a rare quality, only present in individuals with exceptional talent for seeing into the future. Yet, vision is something everyone needs, whether you’re a software developer, IT executive, UX designer, an artist, or something else.
Nigel Simpson, former Disney executive and founder of Red Satchel, LLC, has advised startups in many industries. Without exception, the founders are exceptional entrepreneurs. Surprisingly, however, they tend to be very shortsighted with their company visions. When asked what their vision was, they often responded with, “We’re building a thing that does X”. That’s not a vision, it’s an artifact.
Why is vision important?
Without vision, teams are on a road to nowhere; only able to comprehend what’s directly in front of them. Vision provides a more expansive context.
A vision:
Makes concrete a future state for a company, project, or initiative. It’s a north star.
Provides inspiration that motivates people to strive for something greater.
Aligns activity around a shared goal.
Focuses attention and reduces the impact of distractions.
Provides a benchmark to assess progress.
Most people start thinking about a business problem with a specific solution in mind, skipping right past vision. They can see the thing they want to build and start building it. This is very common among software engineers who “think in code” and need to write it to see it.
A startup without a vision
A startup was building an educational product for kids. It was an innovative product designed to engage kids in interactive learning activities. The first version of this was going to be great, so Nigel asked the founder, “What’s version 2?” He was met with a blank stare. Then they said that they were too busy on V1 to even think about V2. When Nigel observed that the technology they’d developed for V1 could be reused to create a range of future products, the founder expressed some interest, but they had a hard time imagining a future further out than a few months, let alone years. They lacked vision.
Vision isn’t execution
IT organizations have well-defined processes for running projects: a problem is identified, resources are assigned, solutions explored and then implemented. Rinse and repeat. Vision doesn’t enter the process. Why should it? They’re very good at operating a predictable, repeatable process that minimizes risk. Zooming out, however, would enable them to see the problem in a larger context. Could this be an instance of a class of problems?
Disney’s data center migration
Disney’s lease on a data center in Seattle was expiring and they needed to move applications and services out of that facility. They adopted a forklift approach, lifting the applications from one data center to another. A few years later, the lease on the new data center was expiring; history was about to repeat itself. At the time of the first migration, the writing was on the wall about the move to cloud computing. Zooming out would have helped the team see the longer-term vision and enable them to lay the foundations for cloud migration of all applications and services. Disney eventually made a successful cloud migration, but a lot of effort could have been avoided had the team recognized that data center migration was part of an inevitable trend towards cloud computing.
Defining a vision
To define a vision, stop thinking about “what?” and focus on “why?” Ask instead, “Why are we doing this?”
Consider the conception of the Amazon Echo device. One way of defining this might be as a consumer product (a "what"):
“We’re building an interactive voice assistant device for the home”
That’s an accurate definition of the first-generation Echo, but it’s not a vision you can get excited about. Contrast this with a vision statement ("a why"):
“We’re creating a world where access to knowledge is pervasive and accessible to all.”
This statement zooms out from the device and defines a vision of a future where the device fades into the background, and knowledge is never more than a spoken question or thought away. It opens up a world of possible products from voice assistants in the home, in the car, and wearables. All of these share a common vision. Note, this isn’t Amazon’s actual vision for voice assistants, but it serves to illustrate the point.
A good vision statement is clear, concise, and inspirational. Consider JFK’s inspirational 1962, “We choose to go to the moon”, speech:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
A vision statement doesn't get more inspiring than that!
Red Satchel, your Vision Partner
Whether you’re an executive seeking to unify a dysfunctional organization, an engineering leader looking to drive technological change across teams, or an entrepreneur who needs to develop an inspirational pitch, Red Satchel can help you define your vision, and then bring it to life.
Get in touch today, we’d love to help you define and realize your vision!