The Power of Looking Up

If you're struggling as a company, the tendency is to look down, look down at how are you going to survive the day, the week, the month, the quarter.

But I'd argue you may be struggling, because you're looking down.

I recently had two clients from very different industries that were struggling. And when I challenged them to look up, look up to create a clear, inspirational vision of the future, they challenged, they pushed back and said, We have no time to create some beautiful vision we're trying to get through the month.

But when they finally did that, when they finally got clear, not just they were that they were struggling to climb a mountain.

But what was the very specific mountain they were climbing?
What was that flag on top of the mountain? What was that?
What's that big, hairy, audacious goal 10 To 15 years out in the future.

They got clear on that they got excited about that they get inspired by that.

They then came back and said, Well, if we need to do that in 10, or 15 years, what's our three HAG, our three year Highly Achievable Goal?

What do we need to do as that first step to get to our 10 to 15 year goal?

How are we going to differentiate from the competition.

I had them create a postcard from the future, where they looked out three years and created a vivid vision of what they were going to look like, sound like, smell like what would it feel like to work for that company, and instead of looking down and focused on survival, they looked up, and they were inspired.

And when you're inspired, you improve your creativity, you improve your productivity, certainly it improves morale. And all of a sudden, those problems of the moment tend to start falling away. They become small obstacles in the way to get to some unbelievable future that you're incredibly excited about and your organization's excited about.

So what are you doing, to make sure that you don't spend most of your time looking down, and you're spending productive time looking up, creating a clear vision of the future and a strategy to get there.