A Vision to Pursue

Now more than ever before, your firm vision must be clear and enduring.

Before outlining your strategic plan, you must decide who you are and where you want to be in 5, 10, even 15 years. Many A/E firms operate without such clear vision. It’s as if they just happened to be in business.

How to get started developing your firm’s vision

Writing down your vision starts you on the journey. Make your vision describe the work you’d like to deliver without regard to financial considerations — the essence of what you want your firm to be. Make the vision statement unique, succinct, and tailored to the services your firm provides.

Six Steps to Achieve a Vision for Your Firm

Follow these six steps for developing your vision:

1. Sit in a closed room, and fill a page with your ideas for your firm’s vision. Open the sluice gates; let the ideas rush out, and write them all down. Editing has no place here. Every idea has value.

2. Put away the paper, and take it out in a couple of days, or even a week. Take a fresh look. More ideas will surface. Write them down. Other ideas will coalesce. Keep your larger, long-term goal in mind. The ideas will begin to take shape.

3. From your collected and connected ideas, let a sentence emerge. That sentence will voice the one underlying, unifying theme — what all of your ideas add up to. It will be your vision.

4. Run the sentence by your key people. Together, modify it until you all can stand behind it.

5. Print your vision in a graphically compelling format. Then frame it — and don’t be cheap on the frame.

6. Hang the vision statement where everyone can see it.