3 questions to ask when building a business vision

Creating a business vision can sometimes feel a little bit like asking a six year old what they want to be when they grow up. It’s nice to know they want to be Erling Haaland, but how useful really is it?

A business vision, when created with thought, creativity and a generous dash of boldness, is brilliant as a foundation for building a strategy and planning your growth. A well-constructed vision will – metaphorically speaking - help you bag more goals, outrun your competitors and motivate your team to greater glory. And that is where that particular football metaphor must end, as apart from the fact he once went to bed with 5 match balls, that is all I know about Mr. Haaland. (It was the sleeping with the ball thing that made me stop reading, to be fair).

So let’s move on, we’re all feeling a little queasy.

There are sackfuls of useful questions that can help you think about what you want your business to be in a year’s time, and you can end up with a mass of thoughts and ideas that don’t seem to cohere into anything useful. The trick is to explore lots of thinking, have lots of ideas and then spend time editing and reducing these into something small, well-formed and useful.

So here’s three that I find are a really good place to start.

HIT THE HEADLINES | What is the one headline you would most love to read about your business in 12 months’ time?

Draw the front page of a publication – it can be a newspaper or magazine that exists, either industry-specific or broader, or a publication that you created – it doesn’t matter. Write the headline you want to see written about your business. You might think of a few, so spend some time identifying the one that really makes you excited and happy if you were to read it.

This will help you focus on the reputation you really want to build in the coming year, and what you most want to be known for. Really useful for when you start thinking about how you do what you do, and the brand and marketing messages you will be putting out into the world.

AWARD WINNING | In 12 months’ time you will win an award for the impact your business has made. What is the award for?

Draw a large trophy and consider why you have won it. This will help you think about the most important impact you will have on the world – and this doesn’t mean you need to have ambitions of global domination. You could have impact on your clients, your team, the local community, your industry or a host of other stakeholders. Write down the name of the award on your drawing. Write a couple of lines underneath or around your trophy of what you specifically did that was so amazing. You can even draft your thankyou speech for the awards ceremony, which sounds daft but will actually help you think about who and what helped you to make it happen, which will be super-useful when it comes to creating your strategy. Then you can thank your mum / grandmother / pet hamster whilst a tear runs down your cheek and the orchestra plays increasingly loudly as a hint to get off the blimmin’ stage.

DOUBLE DELIGHT | What two things will you consistently be doing in 12 months’ time that will consistently delight your clients?

Draw two love hearts. In each, write down something that you will be constantly doing that your customers or clients are delighted by. This is not about your two best products or services – this is more about the outcome of what you do (for example, you design websites, but the client is not delighted by their shiny new website, they are delighted about the new customers it brings them), or the way in which you do it. They could be delighted by your amazingly creative approach, or the humour you add to their marketing copy, or your inclusive approach to team building.

In these two hearts you will find the two things that could make up your secret sauce – a combination of things that give your business its unique flavour and helps it stand out. This then can be sprinkled on everything you plan to do next year to keep that distinctiveness in focus.

These three questions can give you a powerful start to creating a brilliant business vision that can give you a destination point to head towards over the coming months. These three vision questions work really well as a team activity, so you can complete them individually and then bring them together into a collaborative vision.

When you have your vision, your next task is to make it live and breathe and be a useful North Star for your business and everyone in it. Even the North Star has trouble illuminating the path when it’s stuffed in the back of a desk drawer. Use your vision to create a fantastic strategy (or plan, as normal people tend to refer to it) and keep checking back in with it to see you are still headed in the right direction.

You can always try the Haaland Method, print out 5 copies and take them to bed with you, but don’t blame me if you end up with half a vision statement imprinted in reverse on your bum cheek.

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