Hey guys, welcome! This is V S Campbell.
Welcome to my Saturday segment. I'm going to be talking about vision today. I think you know, as part of leadership, vision is crucially important—and this has been brought home by a recent book that I picked up. I want to share what they want to do, just kind of a brief review of the initial focus of the book.
I'm not going to get into an in-depth review at this point; it will cover some future material for the chapters coming up. But the book by Michael Hyatt, called The Vision Driven Leader, is crucial. I think we all know leadership requires vision, right? This workbook offers 10 questions to focus your efforts, energize your team, and scale your business. I think he's right on. The stuff I've gone through so far, I really enjoyed, and he makes some awesome points.
He kind of starts out initially sharing some information—you know, are you a leader or a manager? And I'm going to get into this in a bit, but the cost of confusion... and I'll just say this up front: I think in the corporate world and the business arena, most of the time, leaders and managers are talked about in a synonymous way, and they're really not. A leader could be a manager; a manager could be a leader. But the two terms have a distinction, and we want to talk about that.
John Kennedy said that those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. And he talks about how some of us can recall back in the late fifties, early sixties, the space race to get to the moon.
John Kennedy cast a vision, saying that we'd get a man on the moon in ten years. This was in 1960. Well, nine years later, that happened. I still remember that as a young man in 1969 when Armstrong landed on the moon. But his observation about this is: he said, thankfully, Kennedy knew—as every vision-driven leader knows—if the vision is compelling enough, people will apply their best thinking and efforts to figure it out, regardless of the obstacles and the opposition. And there were a lot of obstacles and opposition in doing this. But it's interesting to note the vision that Kennedy cast—and even though he was dead, it still took hold. People followed through, and behold, we had somebody on the moon in less than the time that was allotted.
You know, most leaders do struggle with vision, but vision is critical, guys. And here's why—I'll give you a quick example here. You know, vision is future-oriented. Vision is basically looking in a certain direction. So, for instance, I live up here in Seattle, Washington. Okay, if I want to get to Portland, Oregon, I've got to know how to get there, right? I have the vision: I live in Seattle, I want to get to Portland. That's my vision. But I need to know where I'm going. I can't just get on any road, any freeway, and hope that's gonna get me from here in Seattle down to Portland, Oregon. I've got to get on the right road. I've gotta have the right vision. So if that helps—awesome,
So I want to share some information here from the book. It says vision is the essential ingredient for successful leadership—and I think we know that. Any of us who've been in the leadership realm for a while know it.
There's no substitute, he says. Right? Without it, influence fades, along with the crowds. And it's especially true in business. Unless you, as a leader, have a clear picture of the destination—just as I gave an example—of where you want your company to be or your organization in three to five years (he breaks down three-to-five-year goals), you've got nothing that will inspire people to follow you. And he's absolutely correct because leaders create things that didn't exist before.
Okay, I won't get into a ton of stuff, but again, vision is the essential ingredient for successful leadership. You've got to know where you're going. The leader casts that vision, and everything is driven off that.