Business Leadership: Creating a Vision

Business Leadership: Creating a Vision

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion (1). - Jack Welch, former CEO of GE

During Jack Welch's tenure as CEO of one of America's largest companies, his vision helped increase GE's market value from $14 B to over $400 B. For him, success depends on not just having a vision but doing everything in the world in order to realize that vision. Creating a vision is a crucial step in beginning a business and the virtues of which must be rendering something of value.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons (2). - Aristotle

Your vision is the foundation of your business and should include the goal of providing useful goods and/or services. It's not enough to state a specific goal; instead, focus upon how you can help your customers and the world.

Vision for us is not a one-time statement of goals and aspirations, but a dynamic concept, always evolving based on continual examination of how we can create value for our customers and society (1). - Charles G. Koch, CEO Koch Industries

Koch runs America's largest private company and one of the most profitable companies in American history. The value of his company has risen over 2000% since the 1960's and has remained relevant and innovative in an era of rapid change. At an early age, Koch learned that a vision consists of the idea of consistently adding value to the products and services provided. Koch Industries survived economic downturn after downturn because the company consistently sought to improve the quality of its output.

It's very important that we grasp the concept of always going out of the way to give more. This quality separates the successful businesses from the others--the ones that last a long time from the ones that quickly vanish. Napoleon Hill gives us a great tip to help us become accustomed to adding value wherever possible:

You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for (2).

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