Each year, the PiperPartners team members take time out from our daily real estate activities to take a good look at our future and work on our individual vision statements. Over the last four weeks we have worked to envision what success looks like to us personally, in five years, December 31st, 2023.
PiperPartners team at Gallup Park Pavilion enjoying a picnic lunch and some time out to work on ourselves and our vision of the future.
If you have never done visioning or created a vision statement for yourself or your business, I think you should really consider it. Taking a deep look at ourselves in not always easy, it may even be embarrassing or painful, it might bring up strong emotions in us or reminders of where were have failed.
Growth means learning. It means working, doing, creating, resisting, and even failing. We believe that doing this hard personal work sets us apart. It makes us better individuals and stronger teammates which ultimately makes us better able to serve our clients.
Visioning is something you can do by yourself though you may find it helpful to get guidance. One place you can look is ZingTrain.com; they have a workshop on visioning called Creating a Vision of Greatness that may be worth considering for yourself or your organization. You could also consider doing this process with friends, family or a church/community group.
We think that having individual vision statements and then a clear vision and mission for the team to follow as we grow and change is the best way to understand where we want to be in the future, how we fit in our roles on the team and our best path for moving forward each day.
Our team broke the process into several pieces which took place over 3 meetings. Total time commitment for the whole process (including a great picnic) was around 5 hours. This was our process:
- Create a list of “Prouds” – positive achievements from our past
- Write a first draft
- Write it all out – everything
- Write from the heart
- Envision the future
- No editing
- Get really personal (this is not for sharing yet)
- Come back a few days later and revise
- Does it inspire?
- Does it say what you want to say?
- Do I get excited reading it?
- Revise again
- Get input from others
- Share with your team, family members or friends
- Sharing
- Get together with your group and share all or parts of your vision.
We have done this before as a team, I have been writing “as if” letters since 2012, but I have to say this is the most powerful group process we have had. It’s a great complement to the team and to Maggie who let the process for us.
If you have any questions about how to approach this process I am happy to share what we have done and direct you to some resources that may be helpful. Just reach out to me in the comment form below. – Andy
