If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else!

How clear is your sense of where your organisation is heading?

I don’t mean how clear are your goals, rather how clearly can you imagine what it will be like when you get there?

I often find that individuals and teams only have the vaguest sense of how things will be different if they achieve the Operational Excellence goals – how is “Better, Faster, Lower Cost” experienced in reality.

They haven’t really taken the time to “be with” that.

So just STOP for a few minutes and try this.  Recall your top long term goal.  Now, close your eyes and imagine what it will be like when you have achieved it.  Consider these dimensions, in particular how it’s different from today.

👀 – VISUAL – What are you seeing?  What’s around you?  How do you see yourself in the picture?

👂 – AUDITORY – What are you hearing?  What are others saying about you or your organisation?

👃 – SMELL – Yes, seriously!  You’d be surprised how much our sense of smell defines a situation for us.  Maybe TASTE too.  These trigger memories and we can use them to build a stronger picture of our future too.

✋ – TOUCH – maybe a bit harder to work out; depends on context.  The key is to use all of your senses to create as rich an “image”

☺ – HOW ARE YOU FEELING?  What’s your emotional state.  Often our reasons for change are to do with getting to a better place emotionally, so take a moment to connect with that.

There’s loads of evidence that a powerful vision is a powerful motivator and helps others to engage with your transformation programme, so it’s worth investing the time to be able to get a really strong sense of what that is and to be able to help others get that too.

What fresh insight has this given you?  Please share in the comments.

And if you’re just not seeing it, maybe you’re not clear enough on your goals.  Maybe it’s time for us to have a chat 😄.