Chapter 1
VISION
When Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985, he founded a company called NeXT, ensuring that he and all his team wore hoodies with just two words printed on them: ‘We're NeXT!’
In a 1985 interview, an interviewer points out that Jobs does not have a corporate background; he is not an engineer; he is not a manufacturer; he is not a distributor; nor is he a retailer. The interviewer asks that if Steve is none of these things, then what does he personally do? He responds:
There needs to be someone who is the keeper and the reiterater of the vision. Because there's just a ton of work to do and when you have to walk a thousand miles and you take the first step it looks like a long way and it really helps if there's someone there saying ‘we're one step closer, the goal definitely exists, it's not just a mirage out there.' So in a thousand and one little, and sometimes larger ways, the vision needs to be reiterated. I do that a lot.
As entrepreneurs we spend our lives tinkering with a universe that doesn't yet exist. We are creating a world, a business, a model, a product, a team that today doesn't exist, but tomorrow will hopefully be great.
Too often it's too easy to dismiss any sight into the future as ‘guessing' or ‘dreaming', yet as an entrepreneur this is your job, first and foremost. People look to you for direction — your staff, your partners, your customers, your suppliers, the media. When you put your hand up as the leader of a company, your very first job — and it's a job that never ends — is to create the compelling vision that inspires people to push that vision forward.
This means knowing what you want the business to be 10 years from now, and knowing your top three objectives for the coming 12 months, while managing monthly targets to ensure that these objectives are met.
In 1996, just over 10 years after establishing the company, Jobs ended up selling NeXT to Apple for $429 million, plus stock, and once again became the CEO of the company he had founded in his parents' garage.
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@jackdelosa The entrepreneur that wins is the entrepreneur that can best create the universe that doesn't yet exist. #uprofessional |
know your why
When I was eight years old my parents ran a not-for-profit organisation called Breaking the Cycle. Breaking the Cycle would take long-term unemployed youth off the streets, put them through a three-month training program and then help them find work.
Breaking the Cycle was one of the most successful job placement agencies for long-term unemployed youth in Australia, and so a large amount of their funding came from the federal government and Commonwealth Employment Services, an organisation the government had set up to manage unemployment benefits. Although they were a not-for-profit organisation, they turned over millions of dollars each year and changed the lives of thousands of kids, some of whom lived with my family and me.
Seeing how so many young people were brought up and how the traditional system didn't cater to or support these kids made me realise at a very young age that there were more important things in the world than what I was supposed to be learning at school.
In 1995, when the federal government shut down the Commonwealth Employment Services, Breaking the Cycle was unsuccessful in finding funding elsewhere. The organisation collapsed and the hundreds of kids they saw every year were now without the kind of support they needed to lead purposeful lives.
This sent a very loud message to me at a young age: that the world does need people who can change things, although to do this also requires business smarts and a commercial nous that sees these types of social enterprises run in a sustainable and meaningful way. In my father's words, ‘You can't just rely on love, trust and pixie dust.'
This is why I do what I do. Business for me has never been about the money or the ‘stuff'. It is about gaining financial integrity, a reputation and a team of great people who can make a lasting difference to the way people live their lives.
Having a strong ‘why' means that, when things get hard, which they often do, I can see past the challenges and keep moving forward.
Why are you in business? Why are you so intent on facing and conquering this challenge?
Discover this and remind yourself of it every day.
eyes wide shut
Too often when creating a compelling vision for our life or our business, we look at what already exists. We create a vision with our eyes wide open, pulling ideas from what has already been created in the hope that we can improve it slightly.
This works, and it is safe.
A more radical way to form a vision for your life and your business is to do so with your eyes wide shut. Meaning, if you were to draw ideas and inspiration from within, rather than from without, what would you see?
In a speech in Dublin, Ireland, in 1963, John F. Kennedy, then president of the United States, said ‘We need people who can dream of things that never were.'
Too often we discount the voice inside our head, believing the opinions of others to be more credible than our own. But entrepreneurship is about giving life and volume to the voice inside your head and following your own path, not one that has been laid out by someone else.
When the voice inside your head is louder than the voices outside of your head, you have begun to master your life.
the bigger the vision, the easier it is to execute
Counterintuitively, often in business the larger the vision, the easier it is to execute. When you have a compelling vision, grounded in substance and communicated with confidence, people and resources follow.
Too often we can be misled into believing that if we aim small we are more likely to achieve our outcome, but in my experience the opposite has proven to be true. When you paint an eyes wide shut vision that truly speaks to the hearts and minds of the people you want to inspire, people will feel that this is a vision worth being a part of.
A strong vision not only sticks with people, but also becomes remarkable — meaning people will remark upon it. Provided the vision is credible and the right team is in place to implement it, people will amplify your vision everywhere they go.
It is often said that most people are silently begging to be led. Painting an audacious and ambitious vision that exceeds what people are familiar with inspires people to want to be a part of what you're setting out to do. As an entrepreneur, you need to be comfortable leading other business leaders, executives, investors and the media. To lead the leaders and do this with charisma is what great entrepreneurs do best.
12-month road map
Grand visions need to be translated into concise plans. As a small- to medium-sized business, the way we plan and communicate our plans needs to be vastly different to how it's done in a corporation or how it's taught at university.
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@jackdelosa Grand visions need to translate into concise plans. #unprofessional |
In an early-stage or growth-stage business, people need direction, clarity and inspiration quickly. Whether we're communicating with employees, potential partners, investors or other stakeholders we should always be selling the future — acknowledging where we are today and emphasising where we plan to be in the future.
| Go to www.unprofessional.com.au/bonuses to download your editable version of the 12-month road map. |  |
For that reason, your 12-month road map needs to be simple and brief. It needs to fit on one page. It was Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, who said, ‘Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple.' In summarising and communicating our plans we need to fight for brevity and fight for simplicity.
the three core objectives you will achieve in the 12-month period three quarterly objectives for each quarter of the year.Your vision will only ever be as strong as your plan and the team you put behind it. It is imperative that, as the leader of your business, you give everyone around you crystal clear clarity about the direction and objectives of the business, both long term with the vision and short term with the
road map.
Fill in your 12-month road map and make copies of it so it is visible to you and your team at all times. This helps everyone not get distracted with projects that are not core and to stay focused on what truly matters.