Boost The Power Of Your Vision Of The Future
Join Carter Schelling for the final episode of this series to learn how you can strengthen your vision of the future and get the greatest benefit possible.
Full transcript
Generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability.
Welcome to Studio 3655. I'm Carter Schelling, director of development for Martin Healthcare Advisors. Also, I run my own consulting company called 3655 Incorporated, where for the last 43 years, I've helped my business owner clients build extraordinary companies in ordinary industries. Today, we have the third and final part of a series I'm doing on the power that your vision can have on the decisions you make today. The first two episodes were about developing a personal vision and a corporate vision. Today is addressing the issue of well, if the vision you have can inspire and inform and influence the quality of the decisions you make today, how can you make that vision as powerful as possible so it will have the greatest effect possible?
How do we make this as powerful as possible so it has the greatest benefit for this? I say that a vision is only as powerful as it is able to address specifically the things that are most important to you. And most of us when we're thinking about the future have a hard time thinking of everything because it's out there. So, I've built a framework for you to take first your personal vision and make sure you're able to address every element or what I call every dimension of your life.
Now, I say there are seven dimensions of life and here we go. The first one is spirit. Your relationship with a higher power. Over the next three and a third years, do you want that to change? Do you want your family's relationship with a higher power to change? If so, write it down. Second would normally be called health. I call it power and vitality. Your ability to do the things you want to do no matter where or when they occur. Now, if we call your vitality today 100 in three and a3 years, where do you want that number to be?
You want it to be holded at 100 or are you willing to accept that it may slip a little bit? If you pay attention to your vitality, you will notice that the issue of how long you're going to live becomes much less relevant. How do you want to manage your vitality in the next three and a third years? Love your relationships. Do you want any changes there? Any changes in your marriage? Any changes with your kids or your relatives? Put it down. Work. When I had the first episode, I talked about how you want to have x number of clinics and you want to have an operations manager.
You know, what are your most important goals in work as they influence your personal satisfaction? Put them here. Then give back. Give back. What good do you want to do in the world in the next three and a third years? Wisdom. We don't often talk about wisdom, but many of us actually aspire to becoming someday a wise person. Do you want to learn a different language? Do you want to study a philosophy, stoicism or whatever? And increase your ability to understand the world and the people in it.
Put it there. Finally, pure entertainment, water skiing, you know, just fun. What do you want to do for fun? The next three and a third years. Write them down. Keep them posted someplace so you can see them to remind you. Now, what about your corporate vision? What about your vision for your company? How can you strengthen that to improve the quality of your decisions today? Well, there's seven dimensions there as well. Let's take a look at what they are. Number one, leadership. Now, people talk about leadership a lot.
What they don't talk enough about is how important it is for you to protect your state of mind as the leader of the company. You know, in lots of seminars, a seminar leader will ask, "What's the most important asset of your company?" And everybody always says, "My people." It's not true. Okay? It's not true. Think about this. Let's say, God forbid, you have to go in for brain surgery and you pick the best brain surgeon to do the job. And the morning of the surgery, before they wheel you in, you find out that your surgeon's spouse just left him or her for their best friend.
Now, at that moment, it doesn't matter how good the nurses are, okay? You don't want to go through with this operation because the leader, the surgeon is not on top of their game. Your company can be only as good as your leadership. And if you don't work to protect your state of mind, to protect your ability to see things in perspective, to see things not just in terms of doing things right, but of doing the right things. If you can't make the right decisions because your brain is distracted or clouded, it doesn't matter how good your people are.
So, build your work style to protect your state of mind. Number one job in business. Number two, you need sales. Not just sales, but I believe that your position in the marketplace will be strengthened by a focus on niches, groups of customers who have the same needs and your drive to dominate those niches. So, you're the number one supplier. How far do you want to go in that direction in three and a third years? Production. To be able to dominate your niche, you're going to have to have something other people don't have.
You've got to create an unmatched ability. How far do you want to get with that in the next three and a third years? So that your best customers would be stupid to go any place else. Finance industry excellent with money in every way. How much money you make at the bottom line, but also how you handle money. You want to be as good as the top 25% in your industry. How far can you get in the next three and a third years? People, people. Obviously, you want to become the employer of choice, but something very important here.
I say it's a mistake to be the best place for people to work. It's a mistake to aspire to being the best place for people to work because not all people are right for you and you can't be the best place for all people. Some people want to come to work late and do a lousy job. You can't be the best place for them to work. You have to say we want to become the employer of choice for our kind of people for the people like our best employees.
Owners spend very little time defining what that is exactly and having a recruiting and retention program focused on keeping those people preferentially and not worrying about pleasing the ones that really don't make the grade in our company. Culture. Culture. Culture. Culture. Culture, culture. Okay, we have a great culture. Are you living proof? Is walking into your company? Is working with your company living proof of the principles you believe are most important in life? Not just your values, the principles you think should control your behavior. Are your behaviors reflecting your principles?
And does your company's success prove that those are pretty darn good principles? Are you living proof of the principles that matter most to you and your top people? Stewardship. We don't talk about this enough. You have a responsibility, I say, as a person with power. Your company has power. Your people have power. You have a responsibility of stewardship to do everything you can do to protect your children's world. What kind of progress do you want to make in that area in the next three and a third years?
If you follow this list, you'll see some are more important than others. Put your attention into the ones that are more important. But put that attention in. Now, we've got Labor Day weekend. You got some time to think about these things. Write them down and keep them available. So that you can regularly use your vision for your personal future and your corporate future to improve the quality of the decisions you make today. So, if you'd like to talk about this further, put your name and email in down below. Otherwise, have a great end of the summer holiday and we'll see you next week.
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