The answer to … “Where do we want to be in five years?” begins with … “Where are we now?”
To get to your desired future, you have to start where you are now. Being clear about where you are now also includes understanding how you got here.
Many years ago I was leading an Executive Retreat for one of my very early clients. This Founder and CEO took his senior leaders away every year for a two-day retreat at Oglebay Park in Wheeling, WV. He loved going to Oglebay, and he’d rent two cabins side side and we’d spend two days visioneering his company.
On this particular day, we were working on “Where are we now?” I took a stack of 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper and taped them together in a long string on the wall. I put “Today” on the sheet to the right, and I put “1983” on the sheet on the left. That was the year my client had founded his company. For the next hour, the team filled in the time line of major events in the company’s growth that had taken place in each year.
They remembered. They laughed. They teased one another. They celebrated. It was an amazing opportunity to reflect on all of the events and conditions that had led their business to success and significance. A paper trail from THEN to NOW.
After much fun and exuberance in celebrating the journey, we asked the next question.
What is Your Desired Future?
If you could wave your magic wand and make this company anything you want it to be in five years, what will it look like?
For the next 90 minutes the executives were in their Creative Thinking Mode. They wrote thoughts and ideas on 3 x 5 index cards, and we pinned them on a storyboard. When the board was full, we went into our Critical Thinking Mode. We looked at all the ideas and began to narrow them down into the best thoughts about what they wanted their company to become.
After much discussion, disagreement, and definition, the group of leaders had narrowed this list of ideas down to seven specific descriptors of their ideal future. They had created a clear word picture of what they wanted their company to look like, and they were all on the same page about working together toward this vision.
From that storyboard definition of their future vision, the team then created a three-year picture, one year goals, and a focus for the next quarter.
The Founder and CEO was so moved by this process and the outcomes he saw that he asked me if I could work with him and his team to implement this vision. He repeated this process every year for the next ten years, and it only ended when he sold his company. He had built a business that had scaled beyond his wildest dreams when he started, and the result was a company that was highly sought after by larger companies in the industry.
The Seven Step Process for Visioneering Home Care
As we approach the end of the second quarter of the year, I’m often approached by Home Care company CEOs about leading their Executive Strategy Retreat in the fall of the year to get ready for the coming year. One of the types of retreats they often request is The Visioneering Retreat. We have developed and refined a Seven Step Process for Visioneering Home Care.
1. Conduct an Assessment of where we are now.
2. Examine the Environment in which we are operating, exploring the Forces and Trends that are shaping the future.
3. Defining Direction for where we are going, and where we will be in five years.
4. Create Distinction, examining the Seven Sources of Competitive Advantage in Home Care, and clearly defining how we will distinguish our company from our competitors.
5. Assess the People to be sure we have the right people on the right seats on the bus to take us to where we want to be.
6. Evaluate our Processes to make sure we have step by step processes in place for each of the 12 Systems of a Highly Effective Home Care company, and looking at how AI Can help us automate those systems.
7. Measure Performance by tracking Metrics that Matter, and using our Scorecard to facilitate ongoing communication among the leadership team.
What about you?
How do you go about refining your vision, assessing the environment, defining your direction, creating distinction, assessing your people, evaluating your processes, and measuring metrics that matter?
Visioneering Your Home Care Company
Over the past four decades, I have had the privilege of facilitating over 500 Executive Retreats, and most of them have been for Home Care Companies that want to grow their business and get ready for the future.
One element of a highly successful leadership retreat is the time we spend on crafting the Vision for the company. It begins with where we are now. Then the CEO Shares his or her ideas about what they would like to see the company become. Then the leadership team participates in a Creative Thinking experience where they generate ideas about what they would like to the company to look like. This is followed by a Critical Thinking session where the group evaluates all of the ideas, establishes their criteria for their ideal future, and then narrows the list of ideas to the critical few.
It is this Critical Thinking Phase that really separates our process from what most groups do when they come together for “Brainstorming.” Brainstorming is fun and easy. Critical Thinking phase is more difficult, and more important. This phase helps you ground your vision in reality, crafting a picture of what it will actually take to move your company from where you are not to where you want to be.
