Sharpen Your Vision
MEN WANTED for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition IN CASE OF SUCCESS
—Ernest Shackleton, the greatest adventurer of all time, whose men were trapped in the ice of Antarctica for 18 months and survived
Billionaires name having a great vision as one of the keys to success in business. For Cho Tak Wong, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2009, the way to success has three words: belief, vision, and execution. Many billionaires, like Chip Wilson, consider being visionary one of their strength that determined their extraordinary achievements in business.
Set a Vision and Mission
You need to first know yourself before you set your vision.
Sergey Galitskiy wanted to play soccer professionally when he was still a kid. But he didn’t have any talent for it. When he realized this, he set a different vision for himself.
Mohed Altrad says, “My strong point is to have a vision of what I am now, and then projecting this in the future. And for others also.”
Your vision should inspire you and others. If it inspires you, it will then drive you throughout your career and help you endure through difficulties and setbacks. If it inspires others, it will help you win them for your causes and remove obstacles in your way.
Every billionaire started with an inspiring vision. For some, like Frank Stronach, it was at first self-centered. He just wanted to be free, also economically free.
Naveen Jain has a crazy vision to go to the moon and by this inspires others for their own moon shots. “I think that it is honestly about coming from that humble background, and to me going to the moon is not just about going to the moon. It is about creating that inspiration to other people in India and around the world to know that it doesn’t matter what background you come from. If I can dream and go land on the moon, what would you dream? You are better off than I was. And if I can do that, what would you do? And really inspire everyone to be at their best to find their moon shot. And knowing that each one of us would do something different, it doesn’t have to be going to the moon, but they will have their own moon shot.”
Right now he is planning a robotic mission to the moon, but there will be a manned mission in the next 20 years as well. “To me, ultimately my goal would be to change the definition of honeymoon to take your honey to the moon. Because it’s not called honey Hawaii, so why would you take your honey to Hawaii on honeymoon?”
From all the billionaires I interviewed, probably Petter Stordalen uses vision as a tool in his business most frequently and in the most spectacular way. His business is hotels, and he starts every hotel project with creating and communicating an inspiring vision. Thanks to his magical vision, Petter was able to win the contract for a huge hotel project in Stockholm against many contenders and despite low odds.
They gave me 10% chance of succeeding. I said, “That’s not bad. How many are invited to the competition?” They invited 30 or 40 hotel companies, and if they gave me a 10% chance, it’s pretty good. Is there anybody who has a 20% chance? No? So I said, “10% means we are 80% ahead of the others.” They said, “Why?” “Because most of them had a 2%, 3% chance of succeeding. We have 10%. So we are ahead of the pack already.” They said, “Okay, the presentations need to be like that.” I told my people, “Forget everything they write. Do what you think is best. Make freaking magic.” We went there; we had redrawn everything. Moved one hotel, new hotel there, sky bar, swimming pool, spa, everything.
During the presentation, they were like, “This is something brand new.” I said, “If you want to do something that makes people go from New York, from Japan, to see what we have done, do this.” They were like, “What?” We had the three best people in the company, and I was supposed to say nothing. But they asked me, “Petter, what are your thoughts around this?” They had told everything about the product, so I told these few people from this huge pension company, “I am not here for the money. I am here with my heart. This is the project which will define hotels in the future. Doesn’t matter how much it costs us; we will make magic.” I had five minutes. With very strong words, I wanted to show them that this is not an ordinary project for us. This is something brand unique.
I had done that 50 times before.
So when we went out from this meeting, one of the guys in the group said, “Petter, did you mean everything you said?” I said, “Yes, everything.” “That was strong.” I said, “Yes, that was strong.” “But when you say you don’t care about the money … you do.” I said, “Yes, but I wanted those people to understand I’m not here to start with a calculator in my hand. First we’ll make magic, and then we see how much do we need to invest. Maybe we need to do some changes, but we don’t start with a calculator. We start with passion, enthusiasm, a huge ambition to do something really f--king magic.
If you are sitting there and one guy is telling you “I’ll make magic. I’ll do something different,” you will be proud.
Of course, Petter won the competition and as promised, created magic.
Vision and Mission That Matter
Stand for something important. Set a vision and mission that matter. Focus on creating massive value for people and on improving the world around you, on improving people’s lives.
For Chip Wilson, a vision is something that is bigger than one’s self and is never achieved; it’s always there. “My vision has always been to elevate the world from a place of mediocrity to greatness.”
Michał Sołowow, now the wealthiest person in Poland, gave his first public company a proud name, which was also its program: Polish Life Improvement (PLI). “I believed then, and still believe today, that what we do is we raise the quality and standard of living around, no matter the financial outcomes. The truth is we are improving the reality around us, be it by building new flats, office buildings, shopping centers, or by manufacturing something. We improve the life quality for all. And this in some way spreads not only onto the area that we directly affect, but indeed on the whole society.”
Hüsnü Özyegin benefited so much from a good education that he is committed to providing those less fortunate with the same opportunity. Next to numerous other philanthropic projects, he created a university in Istanbul. His vision in relation to that is “to make it one of the best research and teaching universities in Turkey, where students, with their professors, invent things that add value to Turkish exports. This is what my goal is from now on. It’s not an easy thing to do. I am always thinking of what more I can accomplish, but these days I dream about the university and its graduates and how they will go out into the world and be successful. I imagine our young faculty doing innovative research that will have an impact on our lives. I imagine our graduates becoming entrepreneurs and adding value to our economy.”
But his life vision is even greater. “If I can have an impact on another 1 million Turkish people in the next 10 years, I will be happy.”
Petter Stordalen’s overall business vision also has an environmental and social dimension. “My business goal, which I’m working on every day, and I am not there still and I will not be there in years, is to have a true triple-bottom-line company. That means that you have one area for profit, you have one area for sustainability, and you have one area for social responsibility, and all are equally important, and you release figures and targets on every one of these. We do this today, but we have a long way to go to be a true triple-bottom-line company.”
Frank Stronach created a notion of Fair Enterprise and implemented it in his company Magna. It is a system that gives all contributors to value creation, be they managers, investors, or employees, a fair share in the success of the company, also financially. The long-term vision of Fair Enterprise is to eliminate poverty.
What is the primary reason why people get up in the morning? They want to make a better life for themselves and their family.
There’s a lot of poverty in the world. I think the two most important things in life are freedom, freedom to be, to live and also let other people live, right? Freedom has very little meaning to a young person or to a kid in inner-city Detroit. There you can be free to be hungry and free. So freedom is the most important thing. But it means also economic freedom. If you’re not economically free, you’re not a free person. There’s very, very few people who are economically free, and that’s wrong.
Have you heard of the Golden Rule? Who has the gold makes the rules. The world has always been dominated by the Golden Rule. It still is. I don’t want to be dominated by somebody. If I feel that strong, I should not be able to dominate somebody either. So the key question is, how can we dismantle the chains of domination? Not by a violent revolution, but by the revolution of the mind. It’s a moral question, right? So the philosophy of Fair Enterprise is driven by the belief that employees have a moral right to some of the profits they helped to generate.
Tony Tan Caktiong is the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2004. His mission is more down to earth, more tangible, but no less important in everybody’s life. “I noticed that in many restaurants, fast food is not really that good. It’s really hard to find good fast-food restaurants.” His mission in business is “to provide a lot of restaurants that serve very good food, where people can really enjoy [the food].”
Cai Dongqing wants to contribute his best to make a better world, to make people a little bit happier. He does it through his enterprises in the entertainment sector. “We have seen an improving living standard of Chinese people over the past several decades. Along with it, people are longing for more mental satisfaction. I wish to bring more happiness to their lives by offering entertaining products such as comics, animation, movies, games, or via other newly emerging forms. This is what I would love to do. Maybe it is my mission.”
Kim Beom-Su is pushing the limits of technology. He has invented several business models and introduced new paradigms in the Internet and mobile world. He is literally building the future of the world. He wants to be remembered as somebody who “searched for the future and built the future, as a challenger, with a pioneer feel to it.” Success for him is “making the world a better place than when I was born and making at least one person happy.”
Tim Draper’s mission is “to spread entrepreneurship and venture capital around the world.” He wants to be remembered as someone who helped the world accelerate progress.
Mohed Altrad wants to improve the lives of the people he touches. He wants to spread the attitude of kindness across the world.
I’m not interested in having a lot of money in my pocket. Not really. Yes, I can have a few million, but not billions, because I don’t really need it.
He wrote a thick charter with a Code of Values for his company and hopes these values will survive him as part of the company and will serve future generations in perpetuity.
And the idea is to save the world. I know that what I am telling you is a drop of water in the humanity. But I’m trying to do something. Well, actually, I’m not trying. I’ve discovered that’s what I’ve been doing these last 30 years. Because this company grew, I had the opportunity to sell it maybe 13 times, and then have a lot of money in my pocket. But it has never been my ambition.
The central values that he wants to promote are faith and hope.
Faith is the basis you and I and others should act on. Hope is something that transports you to the future. And then just create that and ensure that it carries on and it adapts itself to the size of the group. You hope also that others will be inspired by this thing. If it’s the case, 23,000 families will be affected directly by our charter. With maybe four people per family, that’s 100,000 people. They have faith and they have hope and they’re happy.
Communicate Your Vision and Values Effectively
Having a vision is one thing; being able to convey it is another. In order for your vision to affect other people, you need to learn to communicate it effectively. You need to be able to convey your values to your followers.
For that, communication skill as described in chapter 6 is essential. But there is much more to that.
First you need to be clear on what your vision is, what you want to achieve. If you don’t know what you want, how can you get there?
For Ron Sim, clarity is one of the reasons for his success. “What decided my success? I always say that success is a function of two things: what you believe and what you do. I think I always believed in myself, and I have clarity about what I want to do most of the time when I decide on something.”
Then you need to make sure you will be understood. You need to clarify your message. Simplicity is king.
This is something, Dilip Shanghvi considers his advantage. “A core strength is the ability to simplify complex issues. I think I always had this capability. I have kept on adding to it because my knowledge base has increased, but the basic skill set existed.”
And then you need to express your vision properly.
Sometimes it can be enough to just express what you need.
Michał Sołowow started a construction company shortly after the system change in Poland. Everything was lacking in the Polish economy. For construction, cement is essential, but it wasn’t easy to come by.
I came to a cement factory to buy cement. I sat in the corridor. I had a technique for sorting out everything, of course through secretaries, that is flowers, chocolates, smiles.…
And some guy was passing through that corridor maybe 10 times, and it didn’t even pass through my mind that it could be someone important. I was sitting on that corridor, and in the end that guy asked me, and he was hardly older than me: “Sir, what are you doing here for so long?” I said, “You know, I am waiting for the head of the cement factory” And he said, “That’s me.” And asked me into his office.
We started talking about what I am doing, what I do for a living, what I need this cement for. And I told him a story, that I am a student, one year after graduation, my company is developing, I don’t have cement, and I am in such a trap.
He said, “OK, you will buy from me as much cement as you want under one condition—you will build me, here, a housing compound for the employees of the cement factory and their families.” That was what happened in the majority of my contracts. That is when I tried to achieve something; then someone said, “The condition for making it is to carry out such and such work for me.” That is how my business developed.
By the way, do you know the saying, “You can have anything you want in your life as long as you help others achieve what they want”? This story is the perfect illustration of this principle.
An important element of the vision mix is to make it durable. Write it down; print it in a book like Mohed Altrad; put it on your website or in the company leaflet, like most billionaires do; paint it on the walls of your company, like Ron Sim did at the entrance to OSIM; or even engrave it into stone, like Petter Stordalen did with his company values.
Every year, there was a convention in Gothenburg, where all employees of Petter’s companies gathered to celebrate together. It’s a great show, during which Petter took a hammer and a chisel and personally engraved another company value statement into stone, to add one to the Stone Rules of Gothenburg.
You need to rejoice when your vision materializes. “Celebrate your victories” is Petter’s credo. “I love celebrations! For example, a hotel opening is not just a party. It is a celebration of the hard and long work that has been put into the project by so many people. It is a BIG thank you to all of the involved, our staff, partners, local community. I believe you have to party just as hard as you work. And in Nordic Choice we work very, very hard.”
The skill of storytelling is instrumental in conveying your vision. Be clear about what you want the world to know about you and tell this story. A great story transports your vision more effectively. Petter is a master storyteller. Use the tools of storytelling we were talking about in chapter 6.
Attract People
If you have a compelling vision and you learned to communicate it effectively, it’s time to attract people with it and embark with them on your mission. A vision is essential for attracting not only employees, but also business partners and investors.
Attract people and embark with them on your mission.
— Rafael Badziag @BillionairePal #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
How attractive a clear vision can be I was told by Selmo Leisgold, Lirio Parisotto’s PR manager. Selmo has known Lirio from the very beginning. Selmo worked for a newspaper in Rio at that time. Lirio operated out of provincial Caxias do Sul in the South of Brazil, where he had started his video rental service. Selmo was sent to him on his 26th birthday with the words: “He is interesting, but he doesn’t have a chance.” It was the best birthday gift he could get. The encounter with Lirio changed his life and completely changed his world view. Once he talked to Lirio, Selmo never returned to Rio. This one encounter made him want to work to make the vision of this great man real. And I can understand why. Lirio, even at 61, radiates this unbent attractiveness that makes you listen to him and do something for him.
So, a compelling vision not only attracts people, but makes them stick to you.
There is no company without people. As Jack Cowin told me, “Well, you have to have the ability to attract people that are going to be part and parcel of what you’re going to try and build.”
This ability is what Jack considers one of the keys to entrepreneurial success. “I was able to attract a bunch of young guys who also bought into my vision. Again, it’s not my talent, it’s just leveraging and getting good people. So I was able to attract some people that were smarter and more capable in various areas than I was. And together we kind of made it work.”
The more talented and the more motivated your team is, the better. And a growing company with a great vision attracts top talent and motivates people. I asked Jack how he managed to attract his extraordinary entrepreneurial employees, some of whom had been successful in their own businesses before.
In our case, the biggest factor has been building from zero to a multibillion-dollar business. Being part of that vision. Being part of something bigger than what you could do on your own. Money, as I say, you’ve got to pay the bills, you want to have a respectable way of life. If that was the number one priority, you’d probably go and do your own thing somewhere. I think it’s being part of a bigger dream that this could become. Domino’s Pizza that we’re involved in right now is an international company now, but this will become a much bigger deal before we’re through. And being part of that is much more exciting than “I made a few million dollars on the side. Now what am I going to do to keep myself entertained?”
A compelling vision not only attracts people, but makes them stick to you.
— Rafael Badziag @BillionairePal #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
I asked Kim Beom-Su how he was finding his key employees. His answer shows how important a role the vision plays when you build a team for your business.
At the very beginning it was really hard. Fortunately, although I didn’t get the first person I wanted, another friend who was quite famous approached me. After that, it was a very difficult process of gathering employees because at that time it wasn’t easy for people to think about leaving a big company to join a start-up, so it was hard to persuade people each time. Even for just a middle managerial role, it was like I was doing the interview and answering all these questions about our company, so it was really agonizing.
After that, as the company started showing some vision for the future and we had some data to back us up, I could show them how much we could grow and show them our future, which made it easier to persuade them, but before that it was hard.
I told them the vision that this would be a big business in the new world and it wouldn’t really work if they didn’t have some understanding of this.
You have to have the ability to attract people.
— Jack Cowin #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Vision Gives Direction
People don’t need management; they need a common vision. Your vision will give your team a clear goal and a direction. Set a mission and inspire people to move in this direction.
It’s quite clear for Cai Dongqing, who set for his company the mission to build the Chinese Disney. “I think for a company, the most important thing is you must set the right strategic direction, which leads a company to go this way or that way. It will enable a company to achieve further progress or suffer a setback. A wrong decision in this point will pose a major challenge for the company.”
Great vision attracts top talent and motivates people.
— Rafael Badziag @BillionairePal #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Your vision will help your team make the right decisions. Why? Because they will adapt to the situation and use their brains to get there. Of course, they will do it only if they are aligned to the mission. That’s what Tim Draper calls “a good business.”
Vision Changes
Like your dreams, your vision evolves with time.
Jack Cowin told me, “Your vision evolves, it changes. A year ago I had a different vision of where I’d be this year than I am today. But from the start, I think it’s fair to say that I had a pretty clear idea that I wanted to build a business. The sales pitch that I gave to the 30 people that invested in me was ‘Trust me, I will do my damnedest to make you have a successful investment. I don’t know whether it’ll be in the chicken business, the hamburger business, making airplanes, who knows where we’ll end up, but I’m prepared to sell my house, pack my wife, kids, move halfway around the world, get into a business, and that’ll be the nucleus.’” Today, Jack’s vision is a multinational pizza empire.
Jollibee is today one of the largest restaurant companies in the world. Tony Tan Caktiong changed the vision of his company several times. The first time was when Jollibee had a few stores, he said that he wanted to be number one in the Philippines. Later he said, “We have been number one in the Philippines. We need to dream bigger, we need to challenge ourselves.” It was the time when he said that he wants the company to be number one in Asia. Now Jollibee is already number one in Asia. Tony gathered the team again and told them that they need to dream even bigger because they had achieved it. He said, “It’s not the dream anymore if you achieved it.” So he said he wants Jollibee to be one of the Top 5 best restaurant companies in the world by the year 2020.”
For many of the billionaires I interviewed, escaping poverty was their first vision and then, step-by-step, it evolved to much, much more.
Cai Dongqing’s first vision was for his family to become strong in order to not be bullied by neighbors. Then he wanted to be successful in business. Now, his vision is to be the Disney of China.
Another Chinese billionaire, Cho Tak Wong, changed his mission several times.
Our family was very poor it was a fact, but I have never wanted to be defeated by that. Hard life is not a problem. I had to stay on and work step-by-step toward the success in that direction. So I never wanted to give up, never wanted to say, “I will be defeated.” That was a very clear mission. First mission, I wanted to get out of the poverty. Second, try to have a good life. That was the direction.”
And now he is on a mission to provide the best automotive glass for China and the world.
And what is the mission you are on, dear reader? What is your vision for the future? Have you set one? Have you written it down? How compelling is it? Can you communicate it clearly? Do you attract the best people with it?
- Drifters follow somebody else’s vision.
- Millionaires gather limited talent for their vague mission as they fail to create and communicate an attractive vision.
- Billionaires effectively communicate a compelling vision that attracts followers.
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