Summary
Visionaries often chase bold dreams, ignoring boundaries and details, leaving chaos. Investors must verify a clear, quantified plan and practical execution. Vision alone fails; true success pairs inspiration with capability to deliver tangible results.
The Chaos of Unbounded Vision
Disregarding Boundaries
Over the years, there have been several instances in which people have been doing business with a cheerful and/or blatant disregard for boundaries. These individuals cheerfully and often recklessly bound forward with the glee and optimism of an unknowing child or an overanxious puppy, pursuing first one shiny object and then the next flashy thing that catches their eye. Scattered behind them along the path is chaos and more chaos, people rushing to put into place the pieces promised and the structures needed to keep the shiny ball in the air and the flashy things going.
Chasing a Future Vision
Sometimes, these individuals have eagerly focused on the future, the bold, brave new world they see out there, somewhere out there, and they have focused on selling that future without any idea how or when it would happen. Yet they speak of it so proudly and realistically that many believed it was the here, the now, or just around the corner.
Expecting Others to Execute
Frequently, these individuals have seen opportunities as pretty flowers, and they’re the busy bees that must go from one flower to the next, and the next, and the next. Unfortunately, they also expected that other worker bees would tend the garden and that everyday activities would happen because the hive would make it happen, even when there were no other bees.
Believing Without Details
Unfortunately, some individuals believed without looking for details. The big dream was enough. They believed that simply meeting with people and talking about things was enough. Starting things made things happen; if you started enough things, something would eventually work. And they didn’t worry about the details of anything they started since they would take care of themselves. Rules, regulations, accounting, taxes? All that “stuff” could be dealt with “later.”
The Investor Knows What?
Distinguishing Real Opportunities
As potential investors dealing with any of these individuals, it is often hard to know if you are hearing about a real, tangible, exciting opportunity from a visionary or about to ride on the “I should’ve known better express.” How can you pick legitimate opportunities from those who have belief but won’t be able to deliver?
The Need for a Concrete Plan
One of the first tests: Does the person have a plan? An honest-to-goodness, written-down, logically outlined, thoughtfully compiled, and financially quantified plan for how this fantastic opportunity will become a reality?
Clarity of Purpose and Action
Vision with Practicality
Next, does this person have the vision and glasses to see? Can they talk about what it will take to make the vision happen in the real world, with specific details about the kind of team, resources, actions, timing, and funding required? The opportunity doesn’t necessarily require the most credentialed leader or the most brilliant CEO, but it must have a leader who will lead and get out of the way when it’s time to let others get things done.
Avoiding Visionary Blind Spots
Visionaries are incredible, necessary, and valuable parts of the organization, but they can’t become obstacles to making things happen. They can’t get so blinded by the vision that they can’t see that things are not getting done. Visionaries need long-term vision, short-term vision, clear vision, and 20/20 vision so they don’t say, “Wow, it’s clear now where we went wrong.” Hindsight is always 20/20, but who wants to be examining failure and doing a post-mortem?
A Lesson from the Trenches
A Start-Up’s Transition Challenges
One entrepreneurial start-up began to transition from research and development (R&D) to becoming commercial. It began building the production facilities to launch the manufacturing capability to produce the products it had been developing for years. The problem: The timeline kept slipping on the equipment it designed and developed to make the products. The business was also in R&D on the manufacturing process and equipment.
Clashing Perspectives
As the year went by, it continued to insist that it would hit the revenue projections for the year that it had been making. As the year progressed without production facilities, the CFO required a reduction in the forecast from nearly $20 million in revenues to zero. An intense argument arose between the CFO and the CEO over eliminating the revenue projection. The CEO was a visionary; he could see that the company could achieve $20 million in revenues. The CFO was the realist. She could see no equipment, production facilities, or product orders, and there was no chance that the company could complete a production facility, get orders, and produce and ship the product in three months (the time remaining in the year). She reduced the forecast to zero. The CEO asked if she couldn’t see the vision. The response: “Yes, I see the vision. What I don’t see are the sales.”
Vision is Not Enough
Execution Drives Results
The CEO in the above example couldn’t or wouldn’t see that the bottom-line results come from executing the vision, no matter what the vision is. You don’t get to book wishes. You book actual shipments of goods or delivered services.
The Cost of Misaligned Leadership
Unfortunately, this CEO could never grasp the difference between vision and reality. He went through two credentialed CFOs; then he decided it was better to have someone who would “see the vision” and not the reality. Unfortunately for investors in private companies, the visionary is often inspiring enough to get them to invest. But, they aren’t sufficiently visionary to lead the organization in generating a return on the investment. Whether the visionary truly believes what they say or is delusional often seems to be a fine line for those involved in the businesses they lead into the abyss. Delusion, con, or simply too visionary to run a business, the result is often the same: investors, employees, and vendors lose.
Evaluating Visionary Capability
So, before you follow the vision, check how visionaries see and what else they bring. Can they see beyond the vision to the necessary actions and deliverables to make it real? Can they deal with the real-world practicalities and lead or get out of the way? When things get tough, visionaries need to be ready to acknowledge the skill sets they may not have and go looking for them.
Inspired and Capable
The Value of Vision
When it comes to entrepreneurship, being visionary helps. It keeps you motivated, involved, and innovating.
Capability Complements Vision
But hand in hand with vision must come capability. Whether you have, acquire, develop, or get it. Visionaries who are successful know this. True visionaries are inspired and capable of making things happen. True visionaries become recognized for the changes they have made, not just the talk they have talked about, but the visions they have shared and the changes they have started.
