9. Entrepreneurial Achievers Have, and Communicate, Vision

Several decades ago the Union Pacific was a major force in moving people by rail. How many people are they carrying today? We all know the answer. It's obvious they saw themselves in the railroad business. They weren't. They were in the transportation business. We should be taking Union Pacific Airlines on our business trips today. But there's no such carrier. They are a good example of what happens without vision. And that's why functionally-focused vision is so important.

Being visionary requires that we ask ourselves important questions. Some of those questions come to the fore during planning. Others, such as "What business are we in?" are asked almost daily. Who knows what would have happened if Union Pacific would have asked themselves such questions a few decades ago.

I recently received a verbose, three-page letter from the CEO of a firm I've been doing business with for several years. A competitor put his company on the defensive when they made some effective strategic changes. He wrote the letter to explain what his organization was doing in response.

He said he was trying to reposition his company. The letter's purpose was to communicate his vision of that repositioning. Unfortunately, the long, meandering letter convinced me he had no idea what position he wanted to assume. The moral: When achievers communicate a vision, they do it in clear language and use as few words as possible. Extra words confuse rather than clarify.

Achieving remarkable feats requires we understand where we're going and have the ability to communicate it.