“I don’t know what my vision is, and the word ‘vision’ has been ruined by past experienced.”

“I don’t know what my vision is, and the word ‘vision’ has been ruined by past experienced.”

Fair enough…

And while you’re sorting through that, consider this…

All that you’re really after is an ideal world.

What is noticeably present?

What is noticeably absent?

Some folks will pressure you to spell out all kinds of detail…

But if certain details don’t matter to you,

Why force yourself to spell it out?

Most of us have relegated vision down to a very, very small circle, thanks to the wonderful leadership consultants & coaches who encourage us to think this way.

I’m grateful for them..

I think just think it’s incomplete.

During our conversation, a sketched out an early version of this.

I can’t call it the 5 Levels of Leadership because, well..

That’s already taken by some guy named John lol

BUT, let’s walk through this.

Many of us start our leadership journey with SURVIVAL. Nothing else is working. We’re at rock bottom. We’ve got to figure out how to make it work. It’s focused on our NEED.

Then, we discover that setting goals can help us stay on track with what want. We set GOALS. We double down on ACHIEVEMENT.

And then, this magical moment when we unlock this thing called ‘leadership’. We discover how to sell a picture of the future, and we call it a VISION. We sell people on an opportunity, get them hyped, and bring them along.

However, this breaks down…

Just to be completely blunt, not every vision deserves to see the light of day.

Go watch Shark Tank or American Idol and find out how some of these visionaries fared.

(I rest my case.)

And if you are good at selling visions that aren’t feasible or can’t be executed upon, you’re going to burn your people out.

For me, that’s when I left most of the conventional leadership advice aside. Fortunately, I had the chance to learn not merely about opportunity but about investment-level thinking, strategy, and finding effective paths forward that actually WORKED.

And I lived there for quite a few years. It was a good place.

But it wasn’t the BEST place. I hired a few mentors (working one-on-one) to start sifting through what was going on. Each one attacked the problem from a different angle.

That’s when I started tapping into a completely new level of leadership and living for myself.

INSPIRATION.

Your world will shift when you no longer start living for the future, living for what works, but you start living INSPIRED.

And something changes when you stop surrounding yourself with people based on what they can DO. Instead, you surround them for who they ARE.

And you shape them into healthier versions of themselves…

Not a CULT,

But a cultURE.

Their values.

Their habits.

Their language.

Their experiences.

This is the place where you can let go of a lot of specifics.

You can even let go of a lot of generalities.

Build the culture & protect the culture.

Then bring in OTHERS for the strategy, vision, and more.

For some leaders, the specific details of the growth plan matter less. But their ideal world has lots of specific detail around the culture, the people, and the enviromnent that they create.

Can I be bold enough to say…

That’s not only ‘vision’

But it’s more powerful than conventional ‘vision’?

I’m not alone here, by the way. Folks much smarter than myself have emphasized this. As Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Many of us have never been in an environment where the culture was strong enough & healthy enough — and with the necessary subcomponents — to create this positive momentum.

But I bet if you stepped into it, you’d never want to leave.

The question I have for you is…

Where are you on this journey?

And what’s the next step for you?