Cameron Herold - Vivid Vision

P icture this: Youre CEO of a company. Your product is a leader in a growing market. Youve got a great team. Your customers love you. You are perfectly set up to explode, and youre ready to lead this growth. You know exactly what has to happen, who needs to do what, and how to get to the next level .

Theres just one problem: No one in the organization can read your mind .

Just because you know what needs to happen doesnt mean that anyone else does. Of course you can tell them, but how often do they really understand exactly what youre saying? They might understand the words, but do they really see your vision? And do they understand it well enough to execute it ?

I see this all the time when coaching CEOs. They have a great team, and they are all working really, really hard, but at the end of the day, they arent going anywhere .

And its usually because the CEO has not laid out a clear map with a clear destination, so the employees dont really know where theyre going. And as the saying goes, if you dont know the destination, any road will take you there .

For a business, taking any road is a road map to disaster .

The only way to have your team alignedmoving in the same direction at the same speedis to develop a detailed vision of the future and share it with them. This seems obvious .

The problem is that the way leaders currently develop their visions of the future isnt working. The existing modelusually called a vision statement or mission statement, sometimes a vision boardsets leaders up for failure, right from the outset .

For example, a common method to create a mission statement is to gather a group of people in a room and have them write their favorite words on a whiteboard. Then everyone votes for their favorites from those. You take all those words that have been selected and mash them up into one sentence, and that mishmash is supposed to be a vision statement. That phrase is supposed to align the whole team .

I have no idea why people do this. Everyone in the meeting knows that it doesnt align anyone. Everyone knows the process and end result are a bit hokey. They know that its simply one sentence, and its usually so vague that is has no meaning .

They know they need more than that .

That sentence doesnt describe what actions the marketing or sales departments must take. It doesnt describe what the customers are saying about the organization, or what is being written and talked about in the media in regard to the company. One sentence is just too abstract (usually because creating them is a process taught by professors who have never actually built a business before ).

You need so much more than what is captured in one sentence. You need something that, when you walk around your company, enables you easily to describe everybodys role and what is going on .

You need something vivid .

Try this exercise, right now: Imagine something you want but dont have. It could be your dream house. It could be a car youve loved your whole life. It could be a bike, a piece of furniture, or even a relationship. Pretend you have it now. Imagine yourself inside of it, using it, touching it. What stands out? What are you noticing? Describe what it looks like, how it feels. Describe the features, the lighting, the flow, the energy, the feel of it .

Thats a pretty clear vision, isnt it ?

This is what you need to do for your company .

This is the Vivid Vision .

One sentence can never do justice to this kind of all-encompassing experience. Its impossible to squeeze the level of detail necessary into a handful of words .

But with a Vivid Vision, you can. A Vivid Vision helps you steer your company in the right direction and at exactly the right speed so you can grow and attain your goals .

After decades of building companies and coaching close to one hundred others, Ive finally codified this critical missing piece to growing a company .

As a leader, you likely already have this sort of deep, clear vision for where and how you want the company to grow. But its an exercise in frustration when other people in your company cant seem to grasp what that picture is. Equally frustrating is when your people fail to become as excited and enthusiastic about it. Their lack of vision or lack of enthusiasm is because they cant see what you see .

A mission statement is just that: a statement .

But a Vivid Vision is a three-dimensional world that you can step into and explore. Its a world you can share with your team to create true alignment and amazing results. Its a true road map that helps your team see where to go, so they can figure out how to get there .

In the late 1990s, an Olympic coach explained to me how he instructed high-performance athletes to visualize themselves performing their respective events. He encouraged them to see and feel themselves acting in that crucial moment .

Extrapolating that technique, he knew that if he could train business owners to see and feel themselves performing like an athlete, their businesses would operate at the same high-functioning level. He created that concept of leaning out into the future, and I liked it so much that I simply co-opted it to use for business .

When I came upon this invaluable tool, I was working for a private currency company. I began using the technique there, and then joined 1-800-GOT-JUNK? as the chief operating officer. There, I envisioned a big, audacious goal: to double the companys revenue in three years. Initially, I didnt know how we would do it, but I was confident that our team would handle the operational requirements necessary to make it an actuality .

We just had to give them the Vivid Vision (at the time, we called it a Painted Picture), the direction to which the company was headed .

We met our goalin just under three years. In fact we doubled our revenue every year for the six years I was COO .

Throughout my career, Ive helped build three companies to over $100 million and coached dozens of entrepreneurs and CEOs to do the same (or better), and Ive used the power of the Vivid Vision to completely transform each of those organizations .

Right now, youre three years away from accomplishing your own equally big and audacious goal. You may not believe me, but its true .

If you trust the process Im going to walk you through in this book, youll get there .

T he old adage says that a picture is worth a thousand words. And thats merely one static picture. What if I showed you a scene in a movie? By taking that picture and putting it into motion, it gives you who-knows-how-many new words to describe it .

A scene from The Sound of Music will demonstrate what I mean. There is an iconic, unforgettable scene in which Julie Andrews twirls and sings in an Alpine meadow surrounded by mountains. Wearing a staid, simple black-and-white dress, she appears enraptured by the beauty of nature as she belts out, The hills are alive with the sound of music. Her playful frolicking evolves into a reverential awe, reflecting her deep spirituality .