Even Amid Uncertainty, It’s Important to Outline Your Vision for the Future
By: Nell Derick Debevoise
Tags: Planning, Business For Good, 2021, B Corp, Leadership

Planning for a Fulfilling Year to Come

All good planning starts with a look back. Take a look back at 2020 to understand how the tumult affected the planning you did this time last year. Consider what you didn’t achieve or learn that you were expecting to. Consider also what you did learn or accomplish that you didn’t expect to. In challenge lies opportunity, and we have all grown from the significant obstacles and shifts presented to us in 2020. (You can review these learnings in the Me, We, and World dimensions — request a free worksheet here to guide your thinking.)

Use this look back to inform your vision for a fulfilling new year. Here are some ideas of the tactical elements that could contribute to a rich and satisfying vision to help you navigate the uncertainty and ambiguity that we’re all facing.

Breaking your vision into the Me, We, and World dimensions can help make it more tangible. (Photo credit: Getty)

Me: The Foundation of All Impact

An essential first step to set vision is to get still, in whatever way you do that, whether by walking in nature, meditating, running, cooking, or otherwise. Ian Manuel shares a powerful perspective on the power of stillness from his extreme experience in solitary confinement. Once we’re still, it’s easier to get in touch with our true selves — what we want, need, and care about, apart from the “shoulds” we hear from the media, our schools, employers, and friends or public figures. There are myriad tools for self-discovery — choose the ones that you find insightful. One of my favorites is Five Archetypes by Carey Davidson.

Another ongoing part of self work is identifying and refining our purpose — the overlap between what we are good at and enjoy doing with what the world needs. Klay Williams speaks eloquently to the critical nature of purpose to guide us through this stage of transformation. A useful tool for those looking for clarity on those skills and needs of the world is Purpose Match.

Finally, build your resilience muscle. During a global pandemic or not, the human experience is one of challenge, change, loss, and growth. Resilience is the critical ability to weather that experience and come out ahead.

We: The Only Unit of Action

No action of consequence is done by one person alone. Even soloists have teachers, friends, coaches, instrument makers, and a host of others supporting their work, as part of their “we.” There will likely be many “we” units in your vision — professional as well as personal, within your company as well as beyond it to customers or suppliers. Being thoughtful about how you want those “we’s” to function, and how you can best fit in, is an important step.

Specifically, making our teams inclusive is a powerful way to improve performance as well as the experience and outcomes for all members of the team and the people or communities it serves. Working toward inclusion requires — and deserves — time, effort, and money, and, as Edward Dugger III shared wisely, it can start very simply, by showing up and building bridges.

Finally, being a “meaning giver” is a high-impact way that anyone can contribute to any team. Research by Zach Mercurio shows the power of simply asking more meaningful questions. That technique works in personal and professional relationships and with teams. At work, Mercurio gives three specific steps to be a meaning giver, improving your colleagues’ satisfaction, engagement, and ultimately creativity and effectiveness in whatever role they may hold.

World: Serving the People and Planet Around Us

As the most collaborative species on the planet, humans are biologically wired to contribute to leaving the world better than we found it. No one — OK, there probably is someone or a few hundred folks — wakes up in the morning wanting to burn extra carbon or prevent someone from reaching their full potential. The exciting opportunity about this era of transformation is that we have all the technology and theory about how to build economies and societies that are good for all people, and our one precious planet Earth: a New Way of living and working. And there are 7.8 billion roles to play in building that New Way, it’s just a matter of learning which is yours.

Before you get daunted at the prospect of sifting through 7.8 billion job descriptions or figuring out what sustainable capitalism looks like in your company, fret not. The work has been done, and your role is to figure out where you fit in. Start with the imperatives to “reset capitalism” laid out by Imperative 21’s broad group of global stakeholders. Then, use the B Lab B Impact Assessment to consider some part of the company you work for (or invest in, or buy from). There are specific questions examining how companies deal with employees, customers, consumers, the environment, and their own governance structures. Choose a few and learn more about how the companies you engage with could do better.

Finally, read up on stakeholder capitalism and regenerative economies. Learn from experts like Christopher Marquis about why it is in business’s interest to address social issues like poverty, and Rebecca Henderson on how we could reimagine capitalism to better serve all of us and steward our planet. Follow the Poor People’s Campaign and the work of the Rev. Dr. William Barber II to understand what it will take to unlock all people’s potential, in the service of our greater good.