When I think about strategically planning a marketing campaign or a sales plan or even a financially driven plan about a promotion, I immediately think of: “What are my goals, what I want to achieve, and what have I envisioned to succeed in the future?”. So, what I first do is to set off what I want to achieve with this action, what is my vision? I believe vision is a concept in which we fantasize ourselves, the company, or others inside of it or a project, into what can I or we achieve out it. Besides, we can say vision in strategic planning is there to inspire us and to provide a roadmap to the future for the people that work with us. Eventually, we can easily translate that vision is based upon our imagination and our needs and wants for the future.
Planning is everything
Dwight Eisenhower said that “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”. A statement that confuses everybody that reads it and has many meanings. From my point of view, I agree that plans are something that fluctuates all the time, and you cannot rely on them entirely. But, when I think of planning and combining it with the concept of vision, I can see what he was talking about. Plans are looked at objectively but planning is something imaginary. So, when planning a strategy, you are immediately called to action and that is to imagine or look ahead of what do you want to get out of it. That is called vision.
Ultimately, I believe that you need to first see where you see yourself (company, etc.) in five, ten, or fifteen years from now and then start to work backward, year by year, and strategically planning your way to what you have envisioned yourself.
Involving staff in visioning
Sharing the company’s vision with the people that work WITH you (and not for you, don’t get confused here) is vital for the company’s growth, smooth operation, and creation of value between the management and the personnel. The most important tool for this is storytelling. The best way to share your vision is by sharing the story behind it. Right now, there is nothing more important at creating value than that of stories and the language they are used to be told. There is this thing called internal marketing that people in HR are familiar with. It basically includes the idea of marketing between the management (company) and the staff. Including your staff in the company’s vision creates tons of value for them and for you. It’s a win-win strategy. I will say it again, you need to give them to understand that they are working with you into achieving the company’s vision and absolutely not for you. Resulting in your employees translating this vision into something else and thus not transferring the value to your end customer. Think about the consequences that have on your sales, growth, market share, etc.
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