Building a vision is hard.
In truth, I didn’t expect it to take this long. Two weeks ago, I said to my mentor that I’d send him my vision. Today, I’m still writing about the challenges of building a vision.
I have realised that I need a vision for my business that is aligned with the life I want to lead. That might sound odd. Shouldn’t a business be separate from your life? What do your life goals have to do with running a business?
This is not something everyone needs to do, but I have long struggled in situations where I don’t have a clear ‘why’ for what I am doing. When I have the why, I can devote myself fully to the work I am doing. Because I have a deep-rooted understanding of why I am doing what I am doing, I produce my best work.
This is where my view of life comes in. I believe we impose our own meanings onto life. For me, if I know the why for the work I am doing and I am devoting myself to that work, it has the power to give my life substantial meaning.
All of this has implications for my long-term vision. As I think about my vision, I am acutely aware of the scarcity of time. If I am going to devote myself to a vision, if I am going to spend the limited time I have in this world to my work, it can’t only be an end point. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that I want to build a business where I am not waiting for the end point, but where I love the journey. Then, if I don’t reach the end point, if it all for some reason came crashing down, it won’t matter because my vision is one that was important to me along the way.
I love how Lawrence Yeo puts it:
Understanding the finality of everything brings a clarity that only a wiser version of myself can see. If I know that one day I’ll long for the very things I routinely gloss over, how can I consciously neglect those moments again? Perhaps the best way to give every moment a fresh start is not to redo it, but to be aware of the finish line that awaits each one.
This brings me to thinking about my values and by extension the values I want my business to have. This is something I used to dismiss; values seemed to be a set of words businesses used to sound like they cared about things other than money.
But they don’t have to be. I see the values I have as guiding principles that shape the decisions I make. In turn, these values are fundamental to my vision for the business. They impact how I hire, train and build our team and the metrics I consider to determine whether we are on the right track.
These values are:
Be authentic
Deliver exceptional work
Act with kindness
Think for ourselves
Boundless potential
Change lives
I will take each of these in turn and share how I think about each of them within our team.
Be Authentic
To be authentic is to be genuine and present in our interactions. It also means being willing to speak the truth.
Deliver Exceptional Work
We have high standards in everything we do. We go above and beyond to deliver work of remarkable quality because it brings us joy. We are diligent operators and deep thinkers.
Act with Kindness
We see kindness as a superpower. It’s core to who we are - not an afterthought. Kindness means caring for our community and caring for each other.
Think for Ourselves
We don’t do things just because it’s just the way everyone else does them. We are here to work out what matters to us and to do things in the way we want to do them.
Boundless Potential
We don’t set hard limits on what is possible for us. We are curious about the world and we care deeply about learning and developing ourselves. As a business, we seek to democratise the access to information and empower our customers to become who they want to be.
Change Lives
Fundamentally, this is why we do what we do. We are in the business of changing lives. From inspiring one another to keep going to empowering our customers, we care deeply about having an impact on the lives of others.
I find a lot of comfort in these values. They reflect the values I seek to live and work by. And, as I joined my team for dinner yesterday, I am reminded of how proud I am of having a team that embodies these values.