Leadership & Business

Vision is Not a Group Activity

Like everyone, sometimes I have to learn the hard way, which doesn’t feel good at the time but has its benefits. And the lessons I learn aren’t always based on experience with my corporate performance improvement clients. Sometimes they’re based on my experience with my own small business – certainly small in comparison to the size of most of my clients.

But I’m not sure that matters, because sometimes what works for the little guy can work for the big companies too. You see, I run a business just like my clients do. Sure, mine is a lot smaller, but certain principles are universal.

2004 was the fourth year in business for my company, Breakthrough Management Group (BMG). We had grown well over 60 percent in 2003, and I decided it was time for us to grow up. It was time to start practicing what we preach to our clients.

Because of our extraordinary growth over the first four years, I always found it difficult to make any kind of a definitive plan. I had convinced myself that, at 60 percent growth, we were growing faster in a single quarter than most Fortune 500 companies grow in a year. So for us, planning a year in advance was like making a four-year plan.

Nonetheless, we started the strategic planning process, and the first step was to create a vision for the business. I thought it would be easy.  After all, as most companies know, the real work of an organization is executing plans, not making them.

Boy was I wrong!

I convened a meeting of the most senior leaders in the business, which included our general counsel, CFO, world-class trainers and performance excellence consultants. Who better to help create a vision for the company?

At least that’s what I thought going into the meeting. But very quickly I ran into a problem: everyone had a different vision, a different opinion of what the ideal future should be.  And some didn’t really have a vision at all.

All Men Are Created Equal

All men are created equal. That’s a laugh. Try playing one-on-one with Michael Jordan, or enter a political contest with the President.

The idea that all men are created equal has been around for thousands of years, but does that make it true? In fact, all men aren’t even men. About half of them are women. But seriously, do you really believe we were all created equal?

So how ‘bout it? Can you go head-to-head with Michael? Tiger? Spar with Einstein about the nature of the universe? 

Clearly certain human characteristics are embedded in all our DNA. Now that’s not to say that through hard work and perseverance we can’t all achieve great things, and so often we hear the incredible success stories of how one person or another rose above great limitations to achieve something extraordinary.

There’s Kyle Maynard, who was born without hands or forearms who became a champion wrestler in high school. There’s J.K. Rowling, who was a secretary before she wrote Harry Potter. Probably each one of us even has our own personal story of overcoming some limitation, a small miracle performed to make up for some shortfall or “inequality.”

Heart Can Make the Difference
The movie Rudy came out in 1993, and I highly recommend you see it. Rudy Ruettiger was one of 14 children from a small town in Illinois. He was 5’6” but dreamed of playing football for Notre Dame.

If you know the story, you know that Rudy eventually did make Notre Dame’s practice squad, a group of guys who get “worked over” day after day by the starters. That in and of itself was a huge accomplishment, because Rudy had to beat out much larger, faster and stronger players to get that job. He had the heart.

For two years, Rudy worked out with one of the greatest teams in football history, but he never got a chance to suit up for a game – not until the very end anyway. It turned out that Rudy’s coach did ask him to suit up for the very last game of his senior year. With 27 seconds left in the game, Notre Dame up by more than a touchdown, the coach sent Rudy in, as the crowd yelled “Rudy,” “Rudy,” “Rudy.”

People in South Bend Indiana at the time knew the story of Rudy, and about