I was talking with a friend recently about “vision statements”. I’ve never liked the sound of them and I always thought that it sounded a little silly. It’s all the rage now for businesses to write up their vision statements (which they promptly rewrite at least once every year). However, upon further discussion, we came to the realization that everyone really does have a “vision statement” — a goal, an objective — some “destination” that they use to evaluate issues and make decisions. Everyone has one but few people I think actually really think about what their vision is. If your vision is “to make a lot of money” it’s a vision statement — but not one to be proud of. I think that if nothing else, having to write down a vision statement lets you have a concise and concrete evaluation method that’s much more honest. We stop making decisions from our intution (which is really just basing them on our unstated vision statement) and we have to look at situations in a more rational way.
Good stuff…
