Step 3.3: What’s Your Vision?
Your VISION is your goal - where you are going and what things will look like when you arrive there.
Often, people will create a Vision Board - especially at the start of a new year - to bring their personal vision to life.
Here's a sharp take on Vision:
"We choose to go to the moon."
Seven words from President John F. Kennedy that changed the trajectory of human history. No focus groups. No market research. No ROI calculations. Just pure, audacious vision that made people's spines tingle and their imaginations soar.
Vision isn't a PowerPoint deck or a strategic plan. It's not your Q4 targets or your five-year growth projections. Vision is the future you can see so clearly it feels like a memory.
When Kennedy stood at Rice University in 1962, America was getting its ass kicked in the space race. The Soviets had put the first satellite in orbit, the first man in space, the first woman in space. But Kennedy didn't propose catching up. He proposed leapfrogging – not because it was easy, but precisely because it was hard.
That's what real Vision does. It doesn't play catch-up. It doesn't increment forward. It teleports you to a future so compelling that the present feels insufficient.
Look at today's visionaries:
Musk isn't trying to sell more electric cars – he's engineering humanity's exit strategy to Mars (important note: I’m not a fan but he’s built a hell of a business)
Bezos didn’t build a better bookstore – he created “The Everything Store” that makes scarcity optional
Gates isn't just fighting diseases – he's trying to make poverty and preventable illness extinct
Your Vision needs to terrify you a little. If it doesn't make your palms sweat and your heart race, it's probably not big enough. If everyone immediately agrees it's "realistic," you're probably thinking too small.
Those vision boards people make every January? That's not vision – that's wishful thinking with pretty pictures and better graphic design. A real Vision is a contract you make with yourself about the future you're willing to bleed for.
Your Playbook - your Vision should answer these questions:
What does success look like with zero constraints?
What would you attempt if you knew you couldn't fail?
What future are you willing to be ridiculed for believing in?
Because here's the truth: The most powerful Vision isn't about what you want to achieve – it's about what you want to make inevitable.
Kennedy didn't just get us to the moon. He created a nation that believed impossible was just a temporary condition. He turned "moonshot" into shorthand for audacious innovation. He made America the place where the future happens first.
That's what Vision does. It doesn't just describe a destination – it creates a gravitational pull toward a better future.
So what's your moonshot? What's your impossible dream that's worth failing for?
Because in fifty years, no one will remember your quarterly targets. But they might remember the future you dared to imagine – and had the courage to build.