Rule 3: Have a formal, long-term vision (and don’t forget it)

It’s one thing to have a general ambition for your business, but real value can be added for those that have taken the time to establish a defined vision. This can give more than just direction. It also helps to align decision-making with goals, motivate employees, and strengthen coordination efforts. Your vision could be customer-focused or mission-oriented, but it’s important that it allows your staff, team, and customers to understand the purpose of your business.

With this, though, comes accountability. You need to hold yourself and your business accountable for keeping the vision alive and working towards achieving it. Using an OKR (Objectives & Key Results) and KPI (Key Performance Indicator) model could be an effective way to track and measure how you’re doing. Try to make sure these indicators aren’t vague by including as many points of reference as possible (for instance, number of employees, amount of markets being operated in, etc). These can be changed but should hopefully provide a useful guide for how your business is performing against it.

When you encounter challenging circumstances, which you may do in an uncertain post-COVID-19 world, your business’s formal, long-term vision can provide a valuable anchoring point for decision-making processes. And while it can be easy to get into a flow of taking each day as it comes, taking time to formally review your progress against this vision can be extremely useful. At these points, ask how is the business is doing? Do you need to change your strategy of implementation? And is the vision still valid?