You likely set out with a clear vision of what your business could achieve, fired up at the thought of doing meaningful work and embedding innovative thinking to your sector. But as we enter the fourth year where things feel particularly unpredictable, who could blame you if you’re losing sight of your original vision?

Change is the only constant in the world and thriving within change is a state of being that requires some tools, techniques and practice. So, here’s a five-step approach to help you reconnect with your vision and develop your next strategy – all based on tried and tested techniques successfully used by founders and business leaders for personal and professional growth.

1. Give yourself space to focus on shifting to an always-on strategic imagination

If your original vision for your startup initially resulted in good progress, it can be easy to think that means you must stay fixed on this vision, but that’s not the best way to thrive in a changing world. Instead, we must evolve at the same rate that the world does, or ideally, anticipate the cultural, technological and financial shifts at play and move accordingly. This is true innovation in action.

But you can’t just block out an hour in your schedule marked “adopt visionary thinking”. It requires questioning, unpicking, reaffirming and pivoting – all of which need space away from the grind of the day-to-day.

Give yourself and your team time and permission to imagine. This could be a mandatory 'inspiration day' per month for each team member to gain external stimuli or a quarterly panel of speakers from an industry adjacent to yours to spark fresh thinking and doing. Imagination works best when it comes with a measure of structure and accountability.

2. Go within and see the individual

It’s easy to get involved in every little aspect of a startup and end up losing your sense of self. For founders it’s vital to dig into what has brought you to the place you’re in today and think about what I call ‘the archives of your existence’.

‘Who are you?’ is an irritatingly ambiguous question. But when you give this question the depth and dignity it deserves, you can unlock insights about what assumptions, baggage or fears you carry, what is unique about how you operate and, crucially, why you want to achieve what you’re working towards.

By revisiting YOUR ways of thinking, working and being, you get a better picture of where you deliver the most value and you can identify and fill skills gaps to help your business move to the next stage.

3. Go explore and see the team: the art of interdependence

Who exists in the external world that can provide you with fresh perspectives? Humans need other humans with different skill sets, backgrounds and vantage points if we’re to reimagine the worlds we want to create. 

I’d strongly encourage you to go outside of the usual suspects here. While a mentor or colleagues can add value, what would it mean to ask a friend in another field, a family member or someone you admire professionally?

4. Go ahead, from zero to one, one step in front of the other

You’ll have likely found several areas that need some attention (spoiler: every business, no matter how big or small, has them!) and the multiplicity of challenges can leave us feeling paralysed.

Step four is about tapping into your rational and emotional energizers and getting hyper-specific on what exactly the right way forward is. What is the one priority that will help gently unlock and unfold even more space for you to focus on using that strategic imagination muscle like it’s second nature?

It’s easy to find comfort in what we already know but this doesn’t always breed the necessary solutions.

5. The best way to understand is to try: an exercise to get you going

Complete these statements, five times in ten minutes. The trick is to be as truthful as humanly possible, otherwise, you risk creating a strategy that doesn’t really solve the underlying issue, whether that is practical, emotional, rational, psychological, a matter of geography, value, reward or ego.

I need a way to _________
[what is it that YOU, as an individual, want to do?] 

Because ___________

[what have you learnt about yourself so far?]

But __________

[what’s getting in the way?] 

This means ____________

[how does it manifest?] 

So what I need is _________

[what do you think you need? Be explicit.] 

To _____________

[what is the desired outcome?]

After you’ve completed the first part of the exercise, follow these instructions:
1. Contemplate how your body felt doing that exercise

2. Say each completed set of problem statements out loud

3. Choose the ONE that resonates with you most. You might mix and match sentences

4. Write it out and stick it on your fridge, desk, or in your planner, if it needs an injection of legibility

5. Record yourself speaking it out loud on your phone and listen back to it

Is this the true brief beneath the brief?

Just like that. You’ve got yourself the beginnings of a strategy.