It all starts with your vision…get it sorted here
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Terms like vision, mission, strategy, and roadmap are often misunderstood. Much of the confusion stems from unnecessary complexity, often perpetuated by overwhelmed leaders and unfocused organisations.
However, these four concepts can be explained simply and in a sensible order:
Your Vision is the image of the world you want.
Your Mission is what it takes to create that.
Your Strategy is how you’ll go about it.
And your Roadmap lays out all the tasks you’ll need to do.
It’s that easy. What is slightly harder is defining each of these areas in further detail. Here’s a rock solid method to help you with that.
An overview of the four-step method
It starts with your vision. This is where you describe your desired outcome.
Once you have a vision in mind, you can better understand what it will take to achieve it. This work defines your mission.
Next, you can decide the best approach toward making good progress. This forms a strategy.
With these three things in place, it’s much easier to undersand the actual work required, i.e., your tasks. This is the basis of your roadmap.
Ask yourself these four questions
Below are four questions to help you define your vision, understand your mission, get clear on your strategy, and lay out your roadmap.
Your Vision: What results do I want?
Defining your vision is where all great journeys start. A vision typically takes the form of an all-encompassing sentence, called a Vision Statement.
Writing a meaningful Vision Statement helps you paint a picture of what you want the future to look like.
All my worksheets are available for free when you sign up to Hold That Thought — the weekly newsletter for overwhelmed creatives who want to turn overthinking into expert thinking.
Start by asking yourself: What results do I want in 3 months? In a year? In 3 years? Be very specific here. (These lists will also become useful to you in the roadmap stage.)
Review the lists you came up with and look for commonalities and themes. Your next task is to summarise it all in a single sentence. This will force you to think broadly and be concise. The details can come later.
To get started easily, download the Vision worksheet — a free, editable PDF that walks you through the steps of creating your own Vision Statement.
Your Mission: What will it take?
Your mission summarises the work that needs doing to realise your vision. It should be a single sentence that describes this work in a general sense — specific plans are covered in the last step and they go in the roadmap.
Ask yourself: What will it take to make my vision a reality? Describe what has to happen, in the broadest strokes.
To share a personal example, my vision statement describes a world where creatives are thinking strategically and expertly in all that they do. From this, I’ve decided that my mission — the work to be done — is to help creative professionals turn their overthinking and overwhelm into expert thinking and productivity.
What will it take to achieve your vision?
Once you know the answer to that, you have your mission, and can start thinking about your strategy.
Your Strategy: How will I go about this?
Your strategy is your overall approach to your mission. Will you go slowly? Directly? With the help of many? As courageously as possible? Or perhaps with extreme caution and continuous monitoring?
That is to say, how will you go about fulfilling your mission?
Let’s say that your vision statement involves you teaching children English in a foreign country and your mission includes learning a second language.
There are many available strategies you could choose from to fulfil this mission of language-learning.
For example, if you are a social and adventurous person, you may opt to learn a language in the most immersive ways possible, including travel and group activities with a mix of other speakers.
Perhaps you learn best through diligent study and therefore your strategy is to take a more academic approach, involving enrolling in a college course and spending weekends with reading material.
In my mission of helping creatives become expert thinkers, my strategy is to take a slower, personal approach by working closely with professionals in a one-on-one capacity. I believe that they in turn will influence and lead others to do the same.
I chose this strategy based on my unique skillset, matched with what I find fulfilling, fun, and easy-going.
A different strategy might involve reaching many people at once through group work and public speaking. Or a hands-off strategy through the creation of online DIY courses.
Whatever it is, focus on the overall way you’ll go about this rather than the actual concrete steps you will take.
How will you go about fulfilling your mission? What strategy makes the most sense for your skillset and personal goals?
Answering these questions will make it a breeze to determine exactly what you need to do next.
Your Roadmap: What is the work to be done?
Your tactics are the specific tasks and activities that you will do to fulfil your mission, and ultimately, to achieve your vision. Tactics are aligned with your strategy and they should meet the criteria for SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
All of your tactics, when prioritised and placed on a timeline, will form a roadmap.
To begin developing a roadmap, ask yourself, “What are all the things I will need to do to fulfil the mission; the work to be done?”
For every task or action you come up with, make sure it aligns with your strategy. All of your tasks should fit your approach.
Next, put all of your tasks in a sensible order and hierarchy (some tasks may be subtasks of a bigger task). It will help to make this visual using a pen and large paper, post-its, or a digital whiteboard such as Miro.
Lastly, to ensure your success for the roadmap stage, answer these two questions:
How will I know I’m succeeding?
How will I know I’m done?
These questions will be easier to answer if you first pick some important milestones or progress points along your roadmap.
When shiny new opportunities arise
With all four areas defined, you can achieve greater clarity and focus. Any new work that comes up, opportunities, or potential diversions can be quickly dealt with by asking these questions:
Will doing this new thing help me achieve my vision?
Does it fit into my overall mission?
Does it fit the approach I’ve decided to take, e.g., my strategy?
If all of the answers above are yes, where does it fit on my roadmap?
If any one of the answers to the first three questions is ‘no’ and you still want to do it anyway, you need a compelling reason to make it worth your while. Otherwise, you shouldn’t take on more work. It will, by definition, be a distraction.
Success comes even easier with time and practice
The first time you work through this four-part process, it will be time-consuming and challenging. It will also be unbelievably worth it.
The second time takes half as much time. It will be twice as effective.
The third time and beyond, you’ll be answering the questions before you’ve even asked them. It will become natural and fairly effortless.
If you follow this process and show up to do the work, your success becomes inevitable.
