Is Vision Achievable ?

You would not believe how many people have said YES to that question and these people work at senior level positions in business or IT. Why do you think that is?

The primary reason is lack of understanding between a milestone and a vision. People take milestone as a vision and then claim that it is achievable. Obviously a milestone is achievable otherwise it would not be a milestone.  Statements like “We are going to put a man on the moon” are taken as vision simply because the milestone was difficult to achieve at the time, but still it was just a milestone, A vision would be Space Exploration.

A vision is something you will never be able to reach! You will always work towards it, but never achieve it. I would use successful business and happy life as examples. Let’s analyze them one at a time.

Successful Business: No matter at what level a business is, something can always be done to improve and make it more successful. You can have milestone as fortune 100, fortune 10 or the top company in the world in terms of number of employees, return on investment, debt level, number of products, number of industries, etc. There will always be something that you can do to make it more successful. More people can be hired, ROI can be improved or increased, debt level or liabilities can be decreased, number of products can be increased, and more industries or sub industries can be targeted with additional products.

Happy Life: What does happy life means to you? Would you consider 100 billion in your bank account as the ultimate sign of happiness?  Well would the long traffic lines OR delays in your plane taking off due to weather OR not having a family OR your inability to save someone from dying OR the wrinkles on your face make you unhappy? In essence 100 billion is nothing but a milestone towards achieving happiness while you still have to achieve an endless list of things to be happy.

We can conclude that Vision is NOT achievable, but milestones are! The following sequence can be really helpful in clarifying your understanding.

Vision
Milestone – Helps you verify that you are making progress towards your vision
Objective – help you determine if you achieved your Milestone
Critical Success Factors – Help you determine if you achieved your objective
KPI – help you quantify the objective in order for you to measure success against the CSFs
Measurements or Metrics– help you quantify your KPIs