Beginning with the end in mind was popularized by the late Steven Covey in his wildly popular book – The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The principle is extremely useful when it comes to setting goals both personally and professionally.
Covey uses a powerful story to set the stage for building ones life aim. Morbid as it may sound he suggests imagining yourself attending a funeral.
He suggests that you quickly come to the realization that the funeral is your own. He then suggests you imagine for a moment that four people are lined up to speak on your behalf. One from your professional life. Another from your family. One from your church or civic organization. And lastly a close friend.
Knowing the four people that you would like to speak on your behalf Covey then asks you to write your own eulogies. All from those respective points of views.
The over arching premise is to help you define what you truly value in your life and how you want people to remember you. And knowing that; you can work backwards to develop a plan to live by.
I think the same applies for any business that is trying to scale. They first must have the end in mind. They first must know what they want to be a decade from now, 20 years and 50 years from now.
Organizations must understand it from the point of view of an employee, a vendor, an investor, and a customer. An organization must hypothesize their own organizational eulogies.
And once they understand their underlying values then and only then can they work backwards and set the mission, vision and strategy to build the business by.
Organizations are set in place to serve the people that serve it. They are set in place to build character in others and the default of that investment is a business that builds itself.
Mills Properties will embark on this journey in 2015. I’m not 100% sure what the journey will look like or where it will take us but I will be writing about it along the way. And a decade from now I trust we will arrive at this very place and see it anew for the first time. Not because the fundamental landscape will have changed but we as people and professionals will have grown.
You’re looking forward to the space between Multifamily Maniac,
M
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I think one of the hardest things about this is getting over the fear that can take the mission off the rails, being able to stay focused on what will help you achieve the end you see while putting out fires that are happening in real time.
Perhaps one of the best Business Books I have ever read is Building a Great Business by Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of Zingermans Deli in Ann Arbor MI. I LOVE their business model, and their products but more in the way they manage, and the fact that they have figured out how to do $40 million dollars of volume in a single deli. But the point here is they have practiced writing out Vision Statements, some out as far as twenty years. It becomes part of your culture,