As a landscape industry consultant I have the opportunity to engage with many landscape business owners. Some of these owners are young seed start-up’s and others well-established business enterprises. There is a commonality I see among many landscape company owners and one of the most talked about subject matters that I often engage in is ‘clarity’ of the their business model. Who are we, who do we serve, and how to we serve our customers.
You see, having visual clarity is the first practice of business leadership. When you are clear about who you are, you are able to describe that vision it in vivid detail to those before you. While you might not know or see everything, you often know enough of what it will take to get there and how it will feel when you arrive. As leaders, we typically don’t always make the effort to get a deep sense of clarity. We often get lost in the details. We zero in on the now, and if we’re really lucky, we look ahead to next week. But that’s a shortsighted view. In the landscape industry, leaders who can see farther into the future, not just for their organizations but also for themselves tend to have companies that are more perennial with success.
3- Simple strategies to apply…
Obtaining Perspective… This I like to call the ‘risk-reward’ perspective. Strategy refers to exploring. Ask yourself a range of questions on a variety of topics: your hopes, fears, concerns, questions, and needs. You ask these questions to uncover your thoughts and feelings that influence your ability to be successful. Doing this helps you see where you stand now in relation to what you ultimately want, that long-range vision. You don’t just answer the questions; you explore them. Exploration is not an interview, it’s the inner view. Each view must be measured on the scale of its risk, vs. its reward.
Seeing the perspective… The second process for getting clarity is envisioning the future. Envisioning the future means using your imagination to see yourself in the future. This is when you close the door in your office at the end of each day, you close your eyes for a few moments and get a visual picture of what you want, based on what you’ve seen. It’s like a daydream with meaning. Ideally, in you’re mind you see yourself succeeding because your mind is allowing you to see possibly what’s worked in the past might not necessarily work in the future. Look, it’s just broadening your mind, an improved way to look at things.
Following the path… The path from here to there is sometimes a pretty daunting proposition. It is filled with ebbs and flows. While the term ‘The Path ‘ is what we can perhaps call an organizing metaphor, it sets up a scenario that will help you priorities your thoughts so you get clarity where otherwise there might be darkness or confusion. Visualize yourself moving along your path only takes a few minutes, and it’s easy to do. But the real journey starts when you reflect on the experience you’ve experienced in the past, or the experience before you and interpret what you saw or what you see.
I often have used this kind of visualization as a business owner, and I also coach business leaders with this mindset when they feel overwhelmed about the big decisions they have to make or when they feel discouraged about their reality to achieve their goals. “I don’t know what I’m doing!” or “I know what I want, but I have no idea how to do it!” In reality, what I am doing is simply challenging what I call conventional thinking by either challenging my own mindset or challenging there mindset by seeing things through another set of glasses. The goal is to potentially offer a pathway to get more clarity about what you want… and how to get it.
In order to achieve success in your life and as a leader, you don’t just need a clear vision of the future. You need to have the skill of getting clarity again and again. Both your intuition and your imagination are important access points to valuable information. Information that you need to surface in order to clarify your vision.
How do you keep your vision aligned with your goals?
Steven Cohen, Principal of GreenMark Consulting Group is a business management and operations consultant, mentor and coach with more than twenty-five years of landscape/snow industry experience. Steven has an extensive background in managing cross-functional business operations, business strategy and market growth projects. He prides himself as being both an analytical and a conceptual thinker who effectively partners with business owners to assess opportunities, facilitate strategic decisions, and drive successful implementations. GreenMark Consulting Group specializes in helping growth-oriented companies see through challenges and map out operational and growth strategies.
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