Keeping a Broad Vision
Scene at The Olympia Restaurant (from SNL skit)
Patron: I’ll have a grilled cheese.
Gus: No grilled cheese – – Cheeseburger
Gus: What do you want to drink?
Patron: Coke
Gus: No Coke; Pepsi
Probably one of the most difficult concepts for an entrepreneur to get his mind around is maintaining a broad vision. The concept of broad implies a wide ranging view while vision seems to suggest a certain focus. Seems to be an oxymoron – like jumbo shrimp. We encourage entrepreneurs to maintain that open view while continually harping on staying focused and this conundrum can drive the average business owner out of his mind. So let’s explore this a bit further.
Many of us remember the scene above from the famous SNL routine with John Belushi. You had to admire the tenacity of focus; but you were never going to get any form of potato other than chips, no entre other than a cheeseburger and no drink other than Pepsi. Pure focus like this can certainly define who you are but does it limit the customers you want to reach? Let’s consider another scenario. Why did Steinway and Yamaha have such different levels of business success? Some would simply point to a broader vision. While Steinway focused on producing pianos, Yamaha saw itself in the keyboard business. So when electrical instruments came along, electric pianos and organs were a natural extension of a broader vision.
Apple and Starbucks are also often sighted as companies who look beyond the utility of the products they deliver to a much wider view; focusing instead on the user experience to expand the appeal of their products to a much wider audience. In his book Start with Why, Sinek encourages us to continually look at the market through the eyes of our customers to always understand the true why of their purchase behavior. In essence, keeping a broad vision with focus.
I have seen this issue many times particularly with software development companies. They develop a great platform and in an attempt to demonstrate its capability, they build an application. Now that is all well and good until the application (versus the software) becomes the focus. Let me give you a real example. In the 1980’s, (“a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”) I had a client that had developed voice recognition software. Now I know it is popular today, but trust me in 1980, it was revolutionary. They decided to demonstrate this capability by installing the technology in a phone (remember pre cell phone days.) Being the accountant, I wondered why someone would buy a phone for $350 where they could pick up the receiver, say “home” and have it call home automatically when they could push the button on the phone that said “home” and get the same utility. Apparently, the market saw the same thing, so instead of using the money they raised to improve the technology and license it to others; I watched them go out of business with an inventory of high priced phones nobody wanted. They saw the phone as focus; I saw the software as vision. Put another way, I saw the Olympia as an eating establishment with personality – – not just a cheeseburger factory.
So when it comes to your vision, please work to make sure it is broad enough to create sufficient opportunity and not so focused as to preclude your ability to fully develop your vision.
