How-to create a clear Vision & Strategy for your company & product

“A clear vision & strategy don’t predict successful outcomes; they predicts successful learnings.”

Vision and strategy are often perceived as complex concepts, but they are not. Clarity on these topics isn’t difficult to achieve.

I’ll guide you through my process, step by step, on how to use the framework we employ at Voys. I even use it in my personal life. It clarifies my thinking, anchors my direction, and makes it easier for others to help me improve my ideas and direction.

The end result, the document itself, is a nice side effect. However, it’s secondary to what happens during the process of intentionally trying to clarify your thoughts.

The strategic framework

What is it?

It’s a simple framework that forces you to think and formulate the essence of what you are trying to achieve and what intent is behind it. You should end up with a couple of sentences that convey the intent and the route you are taking to anyone that you show it to; when it’s ready, it should fit on a postcard.

The simplified framework consists of the following parts

• Vision: What does the world look like when you succeed?
• Values: What are five principles that guide you?
• Purpose: Why does this exists?
• Strategy: How are you going to achieve your purpose?
• Accountabilities: What actions are you responsible for in order to achieve the strategy?

Holacracy uses urpose, Strategy & Accountabilities for each circle, which form a great starting point for anything you want to do. The Voys purpose, values are shared publicly.

Why do you need it?

The intent behind using a framework like this is that it clarifies what you know, but also what you don’t know. It’s like a contrasting liquid that shows the settled concepts vs. the fresh ones which need more work.

Investing without a vision & strategy

Open a trading account, transfer 1000 euros, pick some stocks, and wait for 3 months.

Now a couple of things might happen:

1. Your portfolio value goes up.
2. Your portfolio value stays the same.
3. Your portfolio value goes down.

Let’s say the market crashed. Now, what do you do? Do you sell? Do you buy more because it’s even better value now? Do you keep it and wait for it to rebound? When do you cash out? How much do you cash out?

Trying to figure out the answers to these questions in the heat of the moment is going to be very hard without a clear investment vision and strategy. Explaning others why and how you are investing is even more difficult.

Investing with a vision and strategy

Here’s a simple investment strategy that will probably do much better in the long run

Vision: Inflation hasn’t eaten up my savings.

Strategy: Average risk, with average returns

1. Diversify
2. Invest with simplicity
3. Use index funds
4. Minimise cost & taxes

Accountabilities

1. Following the market through through the most liquid tracker
2. Taking out a monthly amount for living, with a maximum of 4% of the total portfolio value. When portfolio value has reached $2.000.000.
3. Live below your means

Using the framework

Step 1: Start with a blank sheet

Name it: Vision & strategy - v0.0.1; indicating there is loads more work todo

Copy the following headers to that blank document

• Vision: What does the world look like when you succeed?
• Values: What are principles that guide you?
• Purpose: Why does this exists?
• Strategy: How are you going to achieve your purpose?
• Accountabilities: What actions are you responsible for in order to achieve the strategy?

Step 2: Start typing

Then I’ll start typing away the best I can, I do not try to overdo it. I’ll take an hour or two for it and write down the ideas the best I can. Doing it this way reveals interesting datapoints about your thinking in step four.

Step 3: forget about it

I forget the whole ordeal for three days.

Step 4: iterate

On day four, I like to start my day by opening the document and reading it with fresh eyes. As if somebody else wrote it.

This is where I find out what parts are vague, which parts are already very solid and which parts might be even to concrete. Maybe I am already in love with one solution.

This same framework is used at Voys.nl, at startups I advice or even in my personal life.

How to proceed from here?

Now you have your initial version. Now what? When you come back to it, it’s probably not where you want it to be. The only way you will get there is if you iterate on it. Pro tip: share the document with colleagues on the third or fourth iteration.

Keep it simple, stupid!

More often than not, the thing you are reasoning about should be so clearcut that it is very simple to reason about.

The vision and strategy should be standalone, without any other dependencies. If, through this process, you find that there are too many dependencies, then it’s probably going to be very difficult to actually achieve the vision. The more dependencies, the more difficult it is to get started and to keep momentum.

January 2024