Getting Started — You Need A Vision!
Where to Start?
I was really excited and grateful to have the opportunity to run a 35 person team to incubate and launch over 350 ventures. When I got the role of CEO, I was ready to get started but also extremely nervous. I knew there was something big I wanted to do with the job and organization, but I was feeling a little lost on how to get started. I wanted figure out what was the best direction for the company to go forward with over the next year but I was not confident just yet in what it was. I also wanted to give my team some guidance on what are best next steps for us to take on work as well. So, it was up to me to figure out what the vision for the year is and how we go about it. It is something every good CEO or leader needs because a great vision helps ground your team when coming up with new projects. It is a great motivator to come back to when your team needs to rally. I realized the best way to get started was to get to know my stakeholders and talk to people. It felt wrong to build a my goals or vision for the organization in a vacuum. I wanted to understand what they people involved wanted for organization and what they thought could be better.
Learnings
So I started out by creating a list of all my stakeholders. Stakeholders are people who are involved with you company or organization. They don’t necessarily have to be working in it but they should have an effect on the work you do and vice-versa. That is how you identify them, by knowing what role they play and when they interact with the organization. Is it direct or indirect? Indirect would be competitors or people doing similar things to you outside of your team. Direct would be when their work impacts the progress of what your are doing. In my case, my direct stakeholders were, my customers, team, board members, and the university. From there I made an interview guide to get more information on what their perspectives of the company were and what their goals for it were.
I first started out with people who were involved with the organization for a long time. I got a chance to interview with a lot of past CEOs, Customers (Launched Ventures) and Board Members, about what they have seen in the past. I got a lot of good information but it was not really structured. After talking to one of the former CEOs, I got some advice on what were the best questions to ask to start building an idea of what your vision is. He basically said go out an ask people:
“What is excites you about the program?”
- To know what you don’t need to change or make sure we keep the same
“If you had an opportunity to change or get rid of something you disliked what would that be?”
- To hit on what clearly was not working
“Going forward, if in one year you wanted the program to be somewhere, where would that be?”
- Basically, if we were to get coffee again in a year, what do you hope we would have accomplished.
From asking those questions, I started to get an idea of what were the common pain-points people were having with what we were doing. I also started seeing a trend on what people thought we did best and enjoyed working on. After around 30 interviews, I had a good amount of information to go off of and now I needed to piece it together.
My best advice for piecing it all together, is to do it your way. You are going to hear a lot of opinions on what people think is the right direction for the organization or team to head. Some might be conflicting and some might be unattainable. Take into consideration, what excites you and what you think you personally can get done. You know your strengths and develop a vision based on both, what you think fits from what others have said and what you think makes sense. Put it all together by what you think is best. Be confident about it but not blind. Check in with people you trust about what your are thinking to see if you are on the right track. Once you feel confident about where you think the next year should head, go for it!
Key Takeaways
- When you first start, coming up with a vision or a goal for the year is really important. It is what people are going to ask you and look for in guidance
- Best way to start is to map out your direct stakeholders and who is has an effect on your organization when interacting with you.
- Don’t build in a vacuum, talk to your stakeholders and get their feedback from their experience
- During the interviews, ask what excites them? What is something they dislike and would get rid of? And what would they want to accomplish in a year?
- Gather your information together and start to identify common trends or issues you see
- From there, build a goal or vision for the year around what personally excites you and take into some consideration what others have said. Do it your way!
