By Mike Bedel, CPA, MBA, CGMA
Partner, Director of Audit & Assurance Services
If you’re the leader of any organization, one of your most critical responsibilities is to have a vision for the future. It may sound obvious, but many leaders are so focused on dealing with the current situation or rectifying past mistakes that they fail to sufficiently look ahead.
Assuming you do have a vision for the future, you need to be planning the steps necessary to make that vision a reality. Once that vision and process are in place, you must communicate them to your entire organization in order to have the best possible chance of achieving that vision successfully.
Your vision process must become a daily stepping stone to the future you seek.
Many agree that the best way to learn is from mistakes. If we don’t take the time to examine missteps, we are more likely to repeat them. So looking back at your organization’s history can be very bountiful.
Be mindful, however, that looking at the past doesn’t blind you from looking to the future. Don’t dwell on past mistakes at the expense of establishing a vision.
As we start a new year, this is a great time to focus on critical aspects of your operation –financial performance, expected capital expenditures, maintaining or increasing your workforce, market trends, changes to your culture, etc.
To establish or refine your vision, start by asking yourself: where is the organization today? Where do you want it to be in 12 months? What are the milestones necessary to get from here to there? The answers you come up with will lay the foundation for your vision and process.
External factors can and should influence your vision. You probably have trade organizations or industry publications that can help educate you on the expected trends for this year and beyond.
There is new leadership coming to the White House in Washington D.C. and the statehouse here in Indiana. However you feel about the election results, it’s incumbent upon the leader of an organization to think about how that political change could impact their future.
The best leaders are constantly forward-thinking. They clearly articulate and communicate their vision to those they lead. Assuming that your vision requires efforts across the entire organization, it does no good to have a plan for the future if you’re not sharing it, promoting it and making it a critical part of your daily work plan.
Understand that the employees of any enterprise expect their leaders to point the way.
Make sure you have established a vision for 2017 and beyond. Ensure it is clearly communicated to everybody in your organization so that they can all help achieve that vision. Don’t let the daily grind push this essential task away into the future.
This is where a lot of leaders fall down. Either they haven’t formulated a vision, don’t define the path to make it happen or fail to share it with the very people who will carry it out.
The purpose of a vision is to help ensure that the future is an improvement over the past. That’s all anyone can hope for, whether in their personal life or their professional endeavors. That is exactly what Sponsel CPA Group hopes for your organization in 2017.
Good Luck and hopefully your vision for 2017 and beyond will become a successful reality!
If you need help with crafting your vision for your company’s future, please contact Mike Bedel at (317) 613-7852 or email [email protected].