Creating your values, vision and purpose is only a small part of starting to create a great culture. In fact, that is the easy part. The hard part is bringing them alive inside of your company. Jim Collins (through Built to Last and Good to Great) told us that we needed to have these fundamental building blocks in our companies. But he didn’t tell us how to do it! 

Which is why most of us have grown cynical about values and vision. They never survive past page one in a company’s orientation manual. They become mere words on the wall and then nothing else.

When it comes to your envisioned  future, or as some of us refer to as our painted picture (thanks Brian Scudamore at 1-800 got Junk for this term!), how do we bring it alive? How do we actually use it so that our future actually happens like the way we envisioned it? Well, this is  where the discipline comes in. It turns out, we can actually create systems around bringing this important element alive inside our companies.

Here are three ways to bring your painted picture alive inside of your company:

1) Make it life size. At Nurse Next Door, as soon as you walk into our office you will see it.  On our wall, we have a 4×6′ life size picture of our future – in both words and in pictures. (the pictures help everyone learn and understand where we are going and what we will look like, the words help us remember some of the detail).  In my dining room at home, my own painted picture is above our table. I see it every day.

Why is this important? Because it keeps you focused on what is truly important to your company. If you don’t see it everyday, you quickly forget. Especially when the challenges and crisis’ start to arise (oh and they will arise!). By seeing your painted picture every day, you will keep the most important things in focus.

Finally, “The Envisioned Future Can Make You A lot of Money” shows us why this might be  a smart move…….

2) Give it out – to everyone. I learned this one from Brian.  When you visit their office, you leave with their painted picture. What a powerful way to manifest your vision – just put it out there – to everyone!  At Nurse Next Door, upon hire, you receive a copy of our painted picture, and we talk about it on your first day of orientation. Same thing when we train our franchise partners.

 Why does this work? It exposes your people to your vision from day one.  And if communicated the right way, they will also understand its significance in your company.

3)  Write your Top 5 goals on a wall. The painted picture isn’t all about measured outcomes, but it should contain your biggest and most important goals, including your big hairy audacious goal. When we created our painted picture five years ago at Nurse Next Door, we took our big 5 goals over the next 15 years and wrote them on a wall in our office – the entire wall. I didn’t realize the effect of this until one day, we were sitting in the room, talking about implementing a policy around lateness to work. (we were  noticing that a few of our employees were showing up late). As we were building a dumb policy (see my post “Do You Have A Policy About Working Naked?”) someone looked up at two of our top goals: To be a Top 10 Employer in BC by 2008 and to be a Top 10 Employer in Canada by 2013.

It hit us like a hammer: there was no way we were going to achieve these two goals by implementing silly little policies that affected everyone when it was only directed at a few. So we didn’t create a policy. And that is when I realized the impact of having your most important goals front and centre and top of mind. ( We hit the Top 10 by 2007 and # 1 by 2009, by the way)

P.S  A “vision” isn’t a 1 line “vision” statement. Why? It doesn’t really tell you anything, it doesn’t inspire, and no one in your company will every really know what it means or care.

This entry was posted on June 24, 2011 at 1:46 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in The Envisioned Future Vision by admin No Comments Yet