FEATURED POST OF THE WEEK

Our long-form article of the week. You can always view the current and past featured posts on Empower’s blog.

Why your vision matters

Do you have a clear vision?

If you’ve started a business, you’ve likely developed a vision internally about the direction you want the company to go.

Have you gone further than that — is the vision written down?

Or is this plan you have for the future just swirling around in your head?

If the conversation about your business’s vision has stopped with you, and you’re wondering why your team isn’t “bought in” or “rowing in the same direction,” the root cause of your struggle may be staring you in the mirror.

You took the first major step: developing a vision. You have a clear picture of what the business should achieve in the future.

You understand a North Star impacts your ability to:

• Maintain focus on the right things and drive decision-making.

• Provide a means to motivate and inspire you to stay on this journey.

• Differentiate from competition.

• Attract talent, customers, investors and other key stakeholders.

• Build a cohesive brand identity and narrative.

But, if a vision, or a distilled down vision statement, is supposed to guide your business, how can it be effective if you’re the only one who knows about it?

Answer: It can’t — and won’t.

The business’s vision should be communicated to every team member and new hire, and be reinforced regularly so there’s no ambiguity and better decisions can be made.

Tips for communicating and integrating your vision

Different approaches work for different businesses when it comes to spreading vision awareness, but several consistent elements will make the process more impactful.

Use language everyone can understand

Avoid jargon and complexity when it comes to sharing your vision. Simplicity is your best friend here.

Make it memorable

Alongside ensuring the vision easy to digest, make it stick. How can you develop a concise vision statement everyone can easily remember?

Create a compelling narrative

Once you have common language and a memorable vision statement, craft the broader story to helps frame the vision and the “why” behind it.

Communicate via multiple channels and do it frequently

Reciting the vision once in a team meeting won’t do the trick. If you want people to believe in it, then they need to hear about it often, see it surface different places and be able to connect how their work contributes to getting there.

Lead by example

You and other leaders must demonstrate how the vision drives the actions and decisions for the business.

Integrate it into daily operations

The vision should be reflected in business goals and day-to-day activities. This means your team shouldn’t merely be executing tasks, it should be working on things aligned to long-term objectives. Goal setting, system and process design, success metrics, hiring, training and onboarding are all aspects, though not an exhaustive list, to build with the overarching vision top of mind.

Collecting feedback and evolving as necessary

While you, as the business owner or founder, are the architect of the vision, I encourage you to be open to bottom-up feedback and willing to evolve it as needed over time.

Vision as the foundation

Your vision isn’t just a well-written document or a pithy one-liner. It serves as an important foundational tool to guide your direction and success.

If you don’t get it out of your head and effectively disseminate it to the right people, you’ll struggle to:

• Build a differentiated strategy and value proposition.

• Maintain unified direction and focus.

• Inspire confidence in your team.

• Clarify the most important short-, medium- and long-term goals.

• Enforce accountability and ownership across the team.

• Develop a strong culture.

• Drive consistent and predictable growth.

Take the time to release your creative genius onto paper — and share it. Then, integrate it into the fabric of what you do. When your vision is clear, your team will know where to go.

WEEKLY DOSE OF EMPOWERMENT

The weekly dose of Empowerment is meant to provide one weekly tip that’s both practical and approachable, to help drive incremental improvement to your day-to-day. We’re always open to your contributions as well. If you would like to submit a tip to be shared with the Empower community in a future newsletter, please reach out at [email protected] with the subject line “Weekly Dose of Empowerment Submission.”

Take a…pause

When you get asked a question or receive a message, do you feel the sudden urge to respond immediately?

If you don’t, I envy you. This often happens to me.

There are scenarios in which I need to remind myself that it can be better to take a moment to pause before responding. Sometimes that initial reaction isn’t fully thought through or could be mixed with emotions that get in the way of effective communication.

So, the next couple of times you feel that pull to answer that Slack message the moment the notification hits your phone or hit reply on that email from your manager, remember a couple of extra moments might allow you to gain clarity, reflect on your language and deliver a more impactful message.

JESSICA’S READ, OR LISTEN, PICK OF THE WEEK

A little something that got my gears turning this week and might pique your interest as well!

From CIO.com: The role of AI in operational efficiency

TL;DR

I appreciated this article from CIO.com because it challenges readers to move away from thinking about artificial intelligence (AI) as a cure-all and more towards examining how the technology can be put to use more practically to drive operational efficiency (my favorite topic!).

The author provides a balanced view of both the benefits and limitations of the technology so readers can appreciate the capabilities, but also proceed with the right level of pragmatism.

This sentence sums up the essence of the article well:

JUST FOR FUN

Really, this section is just for fun. Who knows what will be in store each week?

This week, I’m relying on this community to provide ME with the fun 🥳. I’ll be taking a trip to France soon and could always use more recommendations. If you’ve traveled to the South of France recently, reply to this newsletter with the top thing you did and shouldn’t be missed!

LOOKING FOR MORE EMPOWERMENT?

You’ve worked hard to build your business. Let’s work together to make it last. We want to be your partner in the journey to develop the business that lives into your vision.

There are four primary ways Empower can partner with you to support getting your business to the next level. Click the image below to learn more about our core offerings.

If you’re ready to take the step, reach out to discuss how we can support your goals. 

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