Visions are Temporary

This post originally appeared as a guest article on Startup World.

When you work at a small company, every ripple makes a wave. If one engineer is late, other people show up late. If someone drinks Red Bull, everyone starts drinking Red Bull. Kool-Aid isn’t just a metaphor.

Behavior is contagious and it is the repetition of these behaviors that makes a culture, starting with the founders. But more important, it starts from the beginning.

Incidentally, another exercise which starts from the beginning is the formation of your company’s vision.

As CEO coach Jeff Minch says:

“The vision is the driver, the wellspring of the enterprise’s energy, the inspiration of the founder.  It is the reason why the entrepreneur does what he does.”

If this is true, then the first hires you make as a founder play critical roles — not only do they define the culture, or processes of your workflow, but they also flesh out your [once] unarticulated vision with tangibility through the realization of software, relationships, widgets and so forth.

After all, nobody joins a company whose vision they don’t accept; rather, people leavecompanies when the vision changes from what they once accepted. (At least that was my story.)

All companies, large or small, only succeed when a vision is achieved. This vision can reset, change course, and reset again, but a failed vision does not a successful company make.

Visions are not accidents; they are [with any luck] self-fulfilling prophecies. So when a vision is accomplished, the next task on the agenda is to reimagine the vision.

Sometimes this means returning to the drawing board, like Apple in ’98 when Steve Jobs reduced the products offered from 350 to 10. Other times it means a new project, such as Microsoft launching the Xbox.

Whether catalyzed via success or failure, however, your vision has a shelf life. And since most companies intend to stick around, reimagining your vision isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement.

Case in point: can you think of a hugely successful product that no longer exists? I can. (Hint: they weren’t “fads,” they just didn’t reimagine the vision.)

Vision, then, is a self-fulfilling prophecy that implodes in the face of its creators, regardless of success or failure. And when the vision fades, so does the company. At this point, it’s important to remember what a company is in the first place — a group of people.

So great companies — composed of great people — create ambitious, well-articulated visions, and once realized they must do it again, and again, and again.

It’s a vicious cycle that, in the midst of competition, begs a new question: “What’s next?”

When the US landed on the moon in 1969 we didn’t pack up, go home, and shut down NASA. We asked, “What’s next?”

Team members in your company will ask the same questions, and part of your job as a founder is to be prepared for it. Some folks will join your company because they believe in the vision you’ve already established, while others will join because they want to help reimagine a new one.

As a founder, you need to acknowledge the subtle difference in personal motivation and hire people who fit not only to your technical needs, but the stage of your vision’s procurement.

And remember, in the same way visions have shelf lives, you may find that the people you hire to fulfill them are temporary, too.