Create a new vision of the future

On April 24, 2009, in Leadership that lasts, by Neculai Fantanaru

Contour your vision so that the road that you traverse towards performance to have the particularity of being excellent.

At one point in the movie "Slumdog Millionaire (2008)" the two brothers, Salim and Jamal, are meeting again after a long period of time on the upper floor of a building under construction. While talking about their past and admiring the view from that part of the town, Salim shows to Jamal on the horizon a certain area and tells him:

- That used to be our slum. Can you believe that? We used to live right there, man. Now, it's all business. India is at the center of the world now. And I, I am at the center of the center.

Are you a tenant who does not pay his rent?

The future is born today, but it shows tomorrow. Moreover, it does not always show itself as we expect to be, as we understand to meet and to prefigure it. However, as someone observed, the present is the one circumscribing the horizon of expectations, with which we look upon the future.

Your ability of projecting yourself into the future and visualizing what it prepares to you, it is like a tenant looking for a new house. However, once he found the house that can provide him some comfort, he refuses to pay rent.

The vision begins with the road that you traverse in searching for "home" – of that place from the future, allowing you to achieve professional excellence, and to feel fulfilled on the personal level. However, if you refuse to pay "rent" for your stay there, then your future will not be able to overcome your past full of failures, and will not be able to accommodate your most optimistic expectations – and, in this case you will return to where you left, or you will always be on the move like an eternal traveler.

Leadership presupposes to contour your vision so that the road that you traverse towards performance to have the particularity of being excellent. Leadership is characterized in a certain extent by an extraordinary consideration of the "cost of your host" in a stable environment during your training. The future starts now and evolves at the pace that you can afford it, and depending on how you overcome your limitations.

Take into consideration your own pace of development without reducing the costs of your training and your development in time.

Are you a genuine pivot of the change?

A leader must be capable of prefiguring the future first for himself, afterwards being able to express clearly and understandable his ultimate goal, the possible options and the best modalities of application and solving the future plans and projects in order to improve the company activities,  including the people’s lives.

It is not enough to set goals in order to be accomplished, you must be able to intuit what changes will occur in the business environment, and to be able to influence those changes on behalf of the company, not in its detriment. Moreover, you should also be able to change under way the company's strategy when things take an unfavorable turn. As a leader you must be a genuine "pivot" of the change.

Can you create a new vision and to transform it into reality?

The one who does not change the vision over future and the direction of moving, will forever remain a spectator at a cheap and unprofessional show.

Without a doubt, Brian Tracy was not wrong when he said: "Every day, what you choose, and what you think is what you become." What we imagine is what we see and what you see is what we become. In other words, our future depends on how we imagine it.

In the movie "Slumdog Millionaire (2008)" of which I was telling you in the beginning, the entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity to give another destination to that slums - by transforming it into a residential area, of offices, had only to gain. They had aspired to a different future from that which had imagined the locals.

The one, who will have a clear vision of the future and will work hard, will manage to transform it into reality. On the other hand, those who do not have a clear vision of the future will probably be as stupefied as Salim at the sight of the change: "Can you believe it? Can you imagine that? ... "

Are you capable of perceiving the change before it occurs? Do you have the ability of projecting yourself in the future and visualizing what it prepares? Do you contour your vision so that the road that you traverse towards performance to have the particularity of being excellent?