Undoubtedly most of you finished the above quote by filling in the famous misquote of Alice in her talk with Cat in Alice in Wonderland. “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” But this sentence never appears in Alice in Wonderland. The actual idea appears in a much longer way during a dialogue between the two.
Then there is what Yogi Berra said, although no one seems to have any idea how many of the things Yogi Berra said, he actually said. I imagine he would enjoy this confusion immensely. “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll wind up someplace else.”
Whether pulled out of and created from the ideas in a longer dialogue or an apocryphal comment from one of the most well known American philosophers, these quotes capture the reason for so much business anguish: not having any idea what the end goal is. For without a clear, concise, measureable goal how can you plan the path to achieve it? And how can you know when you get there…or even where there is?
It gets even worse if you think about the actual final few words in the interchange between Alice and Cat, “if you only walk long enough.” Without knowing where you’re going not only will you have no idea how to get there but you’ll also not know when you get there.
I know companies traveling this random path. And the leadership team is wondering why things aren’t going as well as they’d like. Everyone else in the company knows why…they are lost in the wilderness and can’t build a map to get out without knowing where they’re going. And the leadership team isn’t up to the task, or isn’t brave enough for the task, or figures it will all work out…eventually.
Make your life easier. Do some hard work immediately. Pull the leadership team together, take a day, and gaze out into the future. What is that wonderful, big, profitable vision floating out there five or ten or twenty years in the future? Wonderful, big, profitable.
Now think about what you need to get there. The people, the processes, the customers, and whatever else you can clearly delineate and measure. Measure, for without measurement you have no way of knowing how you’re proceeding.
Notice I have not mentioned product or service. If you don’t have something people want nothing will help you so you might as well just pack up shop now and do something else.
But assuming you do have something people want, spend the rest of the day drawing the map that will get you to this future. And the day after take the second step by communicating the vision to everyone and then the third step by actually beginning to follow the path you’ve laid out.
Be strong and stay focused. Follow the map. Don’t led the random trails you cross steal your attention and lead you off in different directions. Keep that vision in sight right out there in front of you…and notice how it becomes more and more solid as you move forward. And how everything begins to improve as the business moves forward, aligned, engaged, with all running down the same path together.
Follow the right road and get where you’re going…without wearing out your feet.