Seeing Savage‰’s future: A vivid vision for the new year

What does your company’s vision look like? Can you picture it? Can you hear and taste it?

When Savage began the process of transforming into a more purposeful company, I wanted to create a vision that would drive our strategic plan. I knew it wouldn‰’t be enough to write a single sentence that mostly abstracted our purpose and turned it into this distant, intangible sort of idea.

I wanted something with more meat, more meaning than just words on a wall. After all, values aren‰’t simple, but if you connect values to behaviors, they become clear to people. They can become instilled in a company culture. But I wasn‰’t sure if that could be done with a vision.

Ultimately, I was inspired by Cameron Herold, who has my favorite approach to the idea of a vision. In his book Double Double: How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less, Herold asks a series of questions designed to help you craft a ‰”Vivid Vision,‰” a vibrantly painted picture of what it will look like when your company achieves its purpose.

With the help of our leadership team, I did this for Savage in a grueling, inspiring, intensive, fascinating process. I had a four-page document where I tried to describe in emotional but concrete language what it would be like to be an employee, a partner, or a client of Savage. It wasn‰’t just saying ‰”everyone wakes up every day wanting to come to work‰”–it was laying out why they would want to be here and what‰’s happening in their offices every day.

This is an awesome tool for kicking off strategic thinking because it creates a very clear, very vivid goal that every initiative and action plan has to work toward. If you‰’re in the process of crafting a strategic plan for your company in the new year, I highly recommend creating your own Vivid Vision before you start work.