True Personal Vision- the bedrock of strategy

Change, it is often said, is the only constant. This saying so much entrenched in our lives that it’s not unusual to sometimes hear even children sprouting this eternal wisdom.

That being the case, it’s surprising that many change agents are ill-equipped to deal with changes. While most can adapt to changes rather well, the ability to synthesise new changes in a given field and use the resultant knowledge to drive an organization forward is sadly uncommon among leaders.

  

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Your present strategic clarity would determine the future of the whole organization

  

Strategizing based on emergent changes is not an inborn trait. It is an acquired skill. However, something prevents the leader from making the necessary leap towards devising the strategy.

Strategy v/s goals

A very common trap the leaders find themselves in, and which prevents them from strategizing optimally is confusing goals with strategy. Not that setting up short terms goals or targets are not necessary for the functioning of an organization. Far from it- they are essential to its smooth running. The trouble arises when the leaders, mistaking setting up these goals for creating a strategy.

It would be akin to the driver of a car confusing stopping at a traffic signal when the light turns red- something he should, by all means be doing- with arriving at the destination that’s still miles away. 

So, then, why does such confusion arise in the first place? 

The answer is lack of vision.

True Personal Vision as the basis of strategy of strategy

True Personal Vision is a unique vision that exists inside your self and nowhere else. It is a vision for the future, that forms the destination towards which one should move- or in this context- lead the organization towards. This vision is all-encompassing in that the strategies that you make towards easily falls inside its grand ambit. 

To clarify, let’s consider the imaginary scenario of the aforementioned driver on a trip. Let’s assume that the vision is to reach a particular place at a particular time because he heard that the view there is spectacular at that time of the day. He knows the distance he has to traverse to reach there but en route, he comes upon a fork in the road. The right path would take him to the intended destination, the one on the left would take him to another place which he knows would grant him another view which is also supposedly grand.

Now, to make a strategic decision at this point, the driver has to ask himself a few questions:

  • Would taking a deroute at this point affect the arrival time at the original destination?
  • Are the attractions that this new place offer worth taking a deroute in the first place? After all, whether one is delayed or not, a deroute demands some extra effort and resources.
  • Last but not least, the question of whether experiencing this new place would enrich in some manner the experience of the final destination? Maybe, there’s a unique architecture to this new place which you could adapt to the conditions in the final destination.

 

 

As you can see, devising a strategy requires one to ask the right questions. And the right questions naturally proceed in the context of vision. In other words, vision is a necessary tool to quickly create strategies based on new and unforeseen changes(the branching paths in our example).

This obviously means that when the time calls for it, you are not without an adequate strategy to move forward. The best part is perhaps that you wouldn’t have to confuse strategy with short term goals if you proceed in the light of your True Personal Vision.

Now that we have seen the importance of True Personal Vision to strategy, let’s look at how you could realize it?

Temenos Vision Lab or TVL is a unique session developed by Temenos+Agility which helps you realise your True Personal Vision that can be lying dormant in your mind, seemingly undiscoverable because of the numerous mental distractions that the business of everyday living brings. Guided by some of the best transformation leaders, TVL also uses proprietary tools in the quest to help you realize your vision.


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