Why You Need to Visualize Your Company’s Future

Why is visualizing your company’s future so important? It’s just images in your head. It can’t do anything, right? That’s where you’re wrong.

If you watched any of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, you may have seen the American downhill skier Lindsey Vonn and her pre-race routine. She would stand there, close her eyes, bob her head back and forth, and wave her hands in front of her face. In other words, she looked like someone who was having a great time at their favorite musician’s concert. What was actually happening was even better…

Visualizing Success

In actuality, when Vonn was bobbing her head and waving her hands in her pre-race routine she was visualizing the run in her head. She was picturing herself carving the turns, tucking on the flats, and sticking the jumps. The two medals she won (including a gold) are solid, shiny proof that visualizing works.

So why does an athlete’s success matter to your company’s future?

You don’t have to be an elite athlete to use visualization. You can use it in all aspects of your life from golfing to renovating your house. It is also one of the best tools you can use to grow your company and productively work towards your company’s future.

Visualizing and Vivid Vision

Visualizing your company’s future is a major part of creating your Vivid Vision (a 3-4 page document of what your company will look like in three years). It’s an essential exercise every young, ambitious business owner, CEO, or COO should undertake to ensure their company’s future success.

In the case of your Vivid Vision, visualization involves picturing your business three years down the road. This doesn’t mean you have to visualize it in some big, ambiguous, conceptual way. Instead, close your eyes and imagine the ideal vision of your company’s future. Don’t get caught up in realism, either. Dream big if you want to.

The Importance of Details

While your eyes are closed and your company’s future is on your mind, take note of as many details as you can.

• What does the office look like? Is it an open concept? A cubicle farm?
• How many employees do you have?
• What is your day like? Are you talking to suppliers? Interviewing job applicants? Negotiating with the bank?
• What are your employees talking about around the water cooler? Do we still have water coolers at all in the future?
• What is your marketing like? Where are you advertising? Have you rebranded?
• How are you funded now? Have you gone public?
• What does the media write about you? Do you have a PR department?
• Is your business also reflecting your core values?

These details will help give you something concrete to work towards and something specific to set goals towards.

Visualizing and Goals

Visualizing lets you enjoy the thrill of seeing where all your hard work is going to take you while helping you to set goals. It also helps you make the kinds of conscious and subconscious changes to your thought patterns and behaviours you’ll need to make in order to create this imagined future.

Visualizing gives you something clear to work towards. Seeing that image in your mind helps drive you to make it real. Imagining the details gives you things to set goals for to get you there.

There is tons of research that shows the positive effects of visualization. If it works for Lindsey Vonn and just about every other elite athlete in the world, it should do wonders for you!

If you have questions or would like more information, I’d be happy to help. Please send an email, and my team will get in touch with you!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in November 2017 and has been edited for accuracy and comprehensiveness.