Mission vs Vision Statements and Vision Boards

Show notes

Mission Statement vs Vision Statement, and How to Make a Vision Board

What's the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement, and does a vision board actually work? Dr. John Oberg and Randy Lorensen look at both, for companies and for your own life.

They start with the company mission: why you need one, why owners have to know why the company exists, and how missions change over time, with examples from Microsoft and BMW. A mission tells people what trip they're on. Using Everest and a canoe trip as examples, they show why commitment to the end goal matters.

Then they get personal. They share what's on their own vision boards (a marriage you're excited about, places, the five people they surround themselves with and simple words like "fun"), where to put a board, and how a board, a playlist and the four questions about time, talent and treasure keep them on their path.

They also ask whether vision boards really work, and close with mission drift vs mission change, and why they review the quarterly plan every week.

How to Make a Vision Board, Vision Board Ideas and Avoiding Mission Drift

What you'll discover:

The difference between a mission and a vision
Why owners must know why the company exists
How missions change over time
What to put on a vision board, and where to keep it
Does a vision board actually work?
Mission drift vs mission change

Timestamps

[00:00] Welcome: mission statements and vision boards
[01:27] What a company mission is, and why you need one
[02:46] Missions change: Microsoft's "PC on every desktop"
[04:05] Mission vs vision
[05:28] Why it matters: a training analogy
[06:45] A mission tells people what trip you're on
[08:07] Owners must know why the company exists
[09:26] Profit, purpose and faith
[10:43] Commitment to the end goal: the Everest example
[12:02] BMW and changing missions
[13:19] Testing commitment: a canoe trip
[14:37] Wanting to be passionate about something
[15:54] Details, morale and the mission
[17:13] Choosing what to work on, and for how long
[18:33] What goes on a vision board
[19:51] A picture of the marriage you want
[21:09] Reminders: playlists and vision boards
[22:29] A condo on the vision board
[23:47] Where to put your vision board
[25:04] Getting aligned to your own path
[26:22] Not making other people's decisions
[27:38] Time, talent and treasure: the four questions
[28:56] A living document, and bucket lists
[30:13] The five people you surround yourself with
[31:31] Words as reminders: fun, the ocean, travel
[34:08] See it, say it: gratitude
[35:28] Does a vision board actually work?
[36:45] Moving toward what you focus on
[38:07] Thoughts as energy
[39:24] Something to look forward to: a Crested Butte to Aspen hike
[40:42] A friend's training, and a random-pixel program
[45:58] Operating by faith
[48:35] Accepting the limits of what we know
[49:52] Helping people get what they want
[51:10] When employees leave for the next job
[52:27] Reviewing the quarterly plan every week
[53:44] Mission drift vs mission change
[55:02] Wrap-up

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg (Anthony Marino isn't on this one). Host bios are on the host pages linked below.

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:07] abundance I am John Oberg wow that was a kind of that was a that was a chipper one huh yeah hey bringing the energy today I'm here with Randy Lorensen my uh co-host here every time each and every time and so Randy welcome back yeah where I'm I didn't have coffee right before this I'm not sure what just happened there I don't know the little little energy Spike at the break might be might be the topic I don't know we'll find out all right well let's we're going to talk about company mission and vision boards today John and I think uh this is a logical Next Step the last episode if people haven't listened to it was uh was about core values y right yep and so we're going to go into today a company's Mission and then vision boards for individuals and how all of that ties together yeah that's right and so we we've talked about the role of a leader before and so there's like uh Clarity sustainability and execution of the three things in there Clarity has to do with core values and outcomes mission statement and then alignment is the execution part of it and Alignment is about how you get people motivated with their vision board personally to the company Mission and getting those things aligned is is one of the most powerful forms of motivation you can have for an employee so that that's really where we're headed today yeah and I think if if you run a company obviously having that vision is the next step if you're an individual having a a vision board is a fantastic tool and and exercise for you as well so I think this speaks speaks to everybody body in a little bit different ways so company Mission let's start there what is it why do we have it you know there and there are there are people Scholars people much smarter than me that have like there's a mission statement and a purpose statement and a and a vision for the company and um you know so purpose Mission Vision I think you can have all of those things and there's a brand promise and there's all and so I think the one thing I wouldn't want the listener to get hung up on today is language right we're going to use the language that I use with companies But please understand there's other people who are very very smart who use language a little bit differently and that's okay too the important thing is you have one set of language inside of your company and so for the companies that I work with we've chosen a very explicit set of language and the mission is the thing you talk about inside your company right and then the uh the brand promise is how you talk about that what you're promising to your customer people that are paying for your services or Goods whatever the case may be and you might have a vision that talks about how you get to your mission statement I've seen people do that before and there's no problem with that but we talk a lot about the mission we talk a lot about the brand promise um and then we talk about some other ways about how you get there some people use the vision statement as that and that's I think that's all fine but for for this podcast we're talking about mission is the thing we talk about internally with the team that tells people why we exist okay great and and this can change by the way over time like in in in Bill Gates in Microsoft for the first I don't know how many decades it was it was a PC on every desktop that was the mission right and then when they got there I think Microsoft has a different Mission now but their their core values are likely still the same so yeah okay and within that company is made up of individuals who have ideally have a vision board and what is that well I mean a vision board is what motivates someone to hit their goals annually and so my vision board uh is like pictures of the of the emotional draw of the things that I'm trying to get done year to year so I set some goals every year and then I have a vision board that I adjust every year to remind me why I'm working towards those goals it's kind of the it reminds me of my motivation essentially and so um and and you know I've made different vision boards over the years some people make a new one every year I'm really supportive of that M I make adjustments to every year and sometimes it gets a complete overhaul but uh it really is about the giving me the emotional motivation to make the decision each and every day to to kind of take the next step that day for the things that are important to me in my life and and I look at my vision board every single day that's not something that happens but there are people that do okay well let's jump into a a what's the difference between a mission and a vision let's let's differentiate that I think again different for different consultants and people that do this stuff regularly for me a mission is is why we're doing what we're doing and a vision is how we're going to get there okay so there's the what and the why and there's the how mission to me is the what and the why and the vision is the how okay so what is essential some somebody's listening they have a business they have a company they're setting a mission what are the essential things they need I think for a mission you want to be really clear and you want to be um concise like I I don't think you want it to drag on for a paragraph I think you want it to be memorable like easy to remember really really clear about where you're headed you know a PC on every desktop like that's pretty clear it's measurable yeah it's big yeah you know calling stuff up big hairy audacious goals like it's all those things you know for for Microsoft so I I think your mission doesn't have to be a PC on every desktop but I think it's got to be comping it's got to be memorable it's got to be hopefully measurable right I think all those things okay and I think going out and finding like all of the you know biggest mission statements um from companies in the world can be an easy way to kind of pick your own mission so and and for me you know I it's um yeah my my mission professionally has been similar for a so how does having mean I guess why is it important like how does it impact the company's ability to hit their goals and successful I'm not a Runner start by saying that but but if I were going running and we were going to train for a race would you want to know if we're training for a 100 yard dash or a marathon seems helpful okay and if you were training for 100y yard dash or a marathon you probably know more about running than I do would you train differently for a 100 yard dash in a marathon well I don't like running much more than you do as long as it's for a sport but yes you would definitely train differently yeah so I was a swimmer growing up and um I was a Sprint freestyle Styer not a distance freestyler and the distance freestylers had much different workouts than we had as Sprint freestylers um and so knowing where you're headed changes everything about what you're doing and so you know it's like let's take hiking as an example you know you can go on a two-hour hike for just a walk in the morning you can go on a three-hour hike that includes a picnic in the middle or you can go on a 60-day hike for the communo in you know Spain and and it's a 60-day hike where you're doing 10 12 miles a day do you prepare for a 2our walk in the morning differently than you do for the Camino definitely so yeah I don't know what the differences are necessarily but I know there's differences right and uh I think if you're gaining and losing elevation when you're hiking you should probably practice that and you may decide to use trekking poles like I use when I go hiking in the mountains but I don't use those when I'm walking around the trail you know near my house and so I think a mission statement tells people what trip you're on and it tells you you know where you are on the trip so you know what bag to pack so you know how far you're going before you get to rest you know you know where the water is along the way I think it's really really important that the mission tells you what the end point is so if I'm going to Mount Everest I need to pack one way if I'm headed around the equator that's a different way and I bring that example because there there's a a guy that I met who was a motivational speaker decades ago named jamy Clark and one of his trips was to Everest and one of his trips is across the Sahara okay and the preparation for those Tri trips is really really different two very different missions right when you think about a mission in the military again not a military guy don't know the military well but I do know that each group that goes on a mission equips themselves and prepares themselves and trains for that mission and so the mission of a company might be decades long but it's got to equip itself for the moment in time of where it is and what the next step is on that mission I think that's why the mission is important because if you don't know what the mission is you don't know what you're doing right this tells you what you're doing okay so let's get into the nitty-gritty how how to create it right you've done this for yourself you've helped multiple companies including including mine create a mission yeah so what does somebody do how do they do it I think the owners need to be clear about where the company's why the company's created first like if you don't know why the company is created pretty hard to pick a mission right so that that's Step One is let's say they don't know what do they how do they do that well then they need to think about why they're that's the first question is why you why are you have why do you have this company you know and I've had I've talked to people about like why have it like should you just not have it okay there's a lot of people I've talked to this said I want to start a nonprofit okay well is there another nonprofit that does that do they already do it well is there a reason you're starting one that's not them is there a reason you're not helping them there's a series of questions you want to go through about like you know not saying you shouldn't work in the nonprofit world not saying you shouldn't start a nonprofit but if there's somebody else out there who's doing it extraordinarily well and your resources could benefit that in a way that you're excited about why not join forces right so I think I think the first step is the ownership or the leadership of the the organization if it's not for profit need to get really really clear about why y you Simon synic start with why this seems like a very prudent First Step okay and Alignment we've talked about in previous episodes how what what should this align with well I think that the the first thing you need to do is align the mission with the intent of the ownership what are the long-term goals and why ownership is around you know I've met owners who have it's like hey look we're working to make a profit so that we can spend our time outside of work doing good in the World in this way that's a very reasonable approach right I think you know I'm a I'm a Christian uh and so I I talk about you know Paul the Apostle was a Tent Maker so that he could be you know putting the gospel out into the world one thing I'm definitely not as a Biblical scholar so there going to be people that you know write and andc correct me about things right left and Center I'm sure but but the reality is that some people are tent making for the purpose of making a living so that they can do their purpose outside of their work and that's totally okay and there are people where their purpose is their work and that's totally okay and I make no value judgment about one or the other I do encourage people to know which is which and which one they're which path on I I was thinking so I was also thinking though just even core values five year goals 10 year goals 30e goals whatever goals people have right it needs to align with those as well yeah I think I mean look at the end of the day if I want to go to Mount Everest there's a whole series of skills I've got to learn there's training I need to do there's you know dollars I've got got to spend or people have got to hire there are all you know there's lots of things to do to make that trk to Everest and committed enough to go to Everest maybe maybe I have the work ethic maybe I but what I'm definitely not is committed to that end goal like that wasn't a thing that I wanted to do so if I was like we're going to go to Everest because it's a great idea and I can make a company around little but I'm not really committed to going to Everest because it's not that important to me well leadership for a company kind of same same type of deal and there I think there are lots of investors in the world who their job is to make profit as a part of what they do you know we have professional investors and private Equity firms hedge funds and their job is to go out and and you know return the investment with a return on the investment for the investor and then maybe they also have other primary or secondary goals about how they do good in the world or whatever the case may be but that that could be a goal set you I've met lots of people who want to start a company because they want to solve a particular problem for the world and that's also a goal set that's great the part that's challenging is when you have Mission drift and when a company gets created for one reason and then it turns into something else inadvertently that can go well in the case of BMW which was an airplane company that became a car company over time because it shifted to the market like I get that but there are also times where that doesn't go well where a company keeps transitioning trans like I still don't know what magic Leaf did they raised a whole bunch of money and did a whole bunch of work work with technology but I'm still not totally CLE on on what they were doing and I haven't tried that hard to be fair I think and again somebody might want to correct me on this I think BMW was forced to change because I think after a war they were not allowed to make airplanes anymore by the Allies but I need to fact check out I don't know that one I think I I think that I think that's when the change came they weren't allowed to so yeah um but I I think some companies have a have a lifespan maybe they just need to get you know like purchas bought absorbed shut down right case may be you know and you you're talking about Everest I can't help this a little bit a rabbit Trail but I can't help it but remember I don't know what it was 3 four years ago you called me you were trying to put a canoe team together to go down this race dister you you had three people you you were like oh I need a fourth person to be in this canoe and and race and and by the way John Randy we're not going to sleep for I don't remember what it was like days hours 72 hours something ridiculous yeah like for two days we're not going to sleep and we're going to win we're going to buy a really expensive canoe I don't know if I said when we're going to I think no you wanted to like set records right you were like we're not just going to go down this because some people stop and they do this can the editor cut this out like can we just not yeah you're all by all this is true unfortunately and and I was like uh no not interested right didn't fit my mission by the way after two out of after two lessons of diligence one where he had a professional instructor teaching us how to row at that level and one where we went out on a canoe to see what it's going to be like for three or four hours also not committed okay I by the way I didn't know you went forward with this oh yeah we went out and I never heard this oh yeah so I went out and did we we hired a professional person who helped other people prepare for this race and we learned about all the things we were going to have to learn and all the techniques you'd have to find and all and then we went out and a couple of us thankfully the other person went with me is a far better um Outdoorsman than I am and we went out for three or four hours and did this and it was like o now I understand what I'm really signing up for and I I decided that um the investment was not worth it just wasn't worth it to me yeah I thought that was really obvious at the beginning but I guess everybody gets it at their own pace all right good good to know but having said that I did go hiking this year I took a 10-mile walk from uh from Crest debut to Aspen um which I wouldn't have done several years ago and we got prepared for it and did it with a group of friends for a friend's birthday party uh and it was really fun it was a really great experience with a group of people and we had a lot of fun doing it and few years ago we did the tour of Mont Blanc in uh in Europe where we walked around Mont Blanc for eight or 10 days that was super cool um and so I think yeah but but 48 hours in a canoe yeah that's not my jam I I'm you thought it you thought it you were very excited about I was EXC I really wanted to have some and you know what it was Randy there are times in my life where I've wanted to be passionate about i' I've wanted there to be something like I have a lot of jealousy is not the right word but a lot um both respect and desire desire that yeah that were you know like I've met people that are so into like trout fishing or so into hunting we're so into Gulf and that and and that just none of those things has grabbed me in that way and I I have a real like wow that is a wonderful passion to have in that way because there's so much you get to pour into that and so much they get out of it and I I find that in other ways but um but I don't have that one thing in way they do I I 100% get it right like it's uh I look at my son in the way he loves music oh oh I wish I just I wish it moved me the way like I tried guitar I tried guitar and I could I just I just didn't have yeah but it just it just I it's it's great so uh yeah all right let's uh sorry to take us down a rabit trail there but uh interestingly enough the guy that went to Everest didn't Summit the first time he did Summit the second time and he had a list of things he learned the first time in failure and I can't remember all 10 of them I remember one of them and the one that I remember was bring more toilet paper and it stuck with me because it was so unusual and so radically different and so about like the level of Det to handle the mission and what not having toilet paper would do to the morale of the team and all those things and so I think from a mission perspective like it it told me a lot about how he learned through failure and how how they improved the preparation process the second time and how committed to the mission they were like can you imagine like trying to get to Everest failing then trying thanks yeah not sometime sometimes when you fail on that one you die you don't get sometimes when you get to the top you die on the way back down then you haven't succeeded there either like that's yeah all right let's move let's move to vision boards and I think this applies to everybody right so this whether you're the person that starts the company or you are the newest lowest employee in the company having a vision board is a fantastic tool that I know it's been really beneficial to me so tell people what is a vision board not as a worker just as a human I could have a vision Bo and this is about you know tapping into your inner motivation right and and there are reasons to be motivated extrinsically like for money and material things and there are reasons to be motivated intrinsically doing good in the world and I think people can be both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated and I think understanding what it is that motivates you and then choosing the things you want to work on for a period of time and so I think that you know when you're younger shorter periods of time as you get older a year is typically the time we talk about for goal setting and Ogie wrote a great book about living without goals it's about all living with intention and not goal I think that's there's some ability there to um but I think the vision board is about um tying into your motivation each day to remind you why you're doing it because you want to have a sense of delayed gratification and not focus on the delay but focus on the gratification and having goals that you may have to work at for a period of days weeks months years in some cases to have that gratification and so you know I remember reading stories about um buildings that would get built in Europe and in Asia that it would take generations to finish a building and so you would start a project that your grandchildren wouldn't finish like that's a type of delayed gratification that I just don't see that as often today and I think that technology is moving us to a place with more immediate gratification more and more and more and that it's having chemical consequences for us in our brains they're drawing us away from longer term delayed gratification and so the vision board is really about having a daily reminder visually of why we're delaying gratification to do what we need to do to get what we want to have for our own reasons does that make sense yeah let's give let's let's paint a picture here for for a listener a little bit what types of things do people put on a vision board yeah so for me one of the pictures I have on my vision board is an advertisement from a company called pek Philip which is a watch company and it's not about me wanting to own a watch there's they have a they have a a by line or a tagline that says you never own a PCH FIP you take care of for the next generation and that's the way I want to Envision all the opportunities in my world all of the material things that I have the world around me the time that I get with my kids like I want to remember it's not mine it's mine to take care of right and so that picture is a it's a picture of a father and a son in right and so and so to me it is a very emotionally like powerful message not about owning a watch right but about taking care of the this stuff love it you know things and not things right that that I'm a steward of and so that's a reminder of me about about what I'm here for you know I'm a Catholic and so in the middle of my vision board is a picture of the crucifix that reminds me what's important to me right um on the top of my vision board you know there's a picture of an older couple holding hands my mind they've been married for a long time they enjoy each other's company it's a really cool environment and that's one of the things that I want is I want a marriage that I'm excited about both today and 50 years from now and so it's that holding hands moment you know I was joking with Amber recently that we were arguing about who wants to hold hands more and how lucky we are to be in a relationship where that's the argument we're play as a play argument like we argu like I want to hold hands more no you and and it's like okay you and so that's the kind of relationship I want to be in that that you know it's like when I get fake mad at her it's because you know that and so that picture is that reminder of of what of of you know it's not about what I get from the relationship it's what I what I'm allowed to give yeah you know which is super cool and I have I have a playlist of like songs we had played at our wedding I have a subset of that on my uh phone that when I don't have Wi-Fi access or or don't have don't want to listen to my Spotify downloaded lists I'll listen to this list of all these songs that remind me of her and so that's it's not a vision board in that case but it's it's a reminder of all the investment that I want to make to the most important human relationship on the earth for me you know and and my kids I love my kids and so how do I invest in my kids and how do I you know and so these are all these reminders of how I invest my time my energy my money right and so the vision board is is a visual for that I've got an audio playlist for that I've got you know these things that are reminders of why I make the choices that I make so that I'm I'm deliberately investing my time my skill my talent my treasure into the things that are important to me okay so and for the listener by the way somebody else might take a picture of that watch because they want the watch sure I have friends who have that watch and they like it a lot in fact I have one of the watches by them and I like that watch and I enjoy wearing it but it's not the that's not the message it sends for you that's not why you have it on there right I've driven I've driven in cars on the on the racetrack before lots of times and I have a picture of uh two race cars on my vision board which have nothing to do with racing but it it's a visual reminder of a lesson that I learned about being in a car that slow is smooth and smooth is fast and you don't want to lose speed the turns it's not because I want to go get in a race car every day it's because I want to remember that I don't want to lose speed in the turns of my life right that I want I want slow to be smooth and smooth to be fast and that's and that's it's it's an important lesson for me that I had so it's a it's a visual reminder of how to live my life in in that moment and so really the vision board is very much about me and and reminding me of the things that I want to be and do each day to be who I want to be great I love it and this aligns with your personal mission and your goals everything else yeah it's the it's it's the life that you want to have yeah I put a vision board of a of a of a condo that I wanted to own one day and five years ago we bought a condo that wasn't the one in the picture but it was like I but I wanted I wanted that lifestyle for a season of my life based on um living in Manhattan on you know halftime for a year and and and that became true that that Vision became a reality right so where do you have yours my vision board I keep electronically and then I keep a copy I have a journal that I have electronic journal and it's the front inside page of that journal and then I keep it in a place where I can update it every year as well inside of a document that I can update the pictures and do all of that and then at various times in my life I've had a picture that I've printed it out and I've laminated and kept it on my desk um and so I think all of those things are really really handy I love the idea of having one visually on your desk and then I have one on a screen that I have up right you know where else have you seen people what what works for other people I've seen some people put a copy of it on their mirror in their bathroom like in their like near their bedroom I've seen some people put parts of it like like tiny little reminders on the rearview mirror of their car if they're in the car every day not not obstructing the mirror of course but like something where they can just a place they're looking regularly yeah I've seen so those are different places that I've seen it I've seen some people place them like I've seen push them in different parts of the house which might make their part are not so excited about having a vision board everywhere yeah I I tried the bathroom mirror with more more goals with with like blue note cards and put goals and I just ignored it now maybe my subconscious saw it but the mirror didn't work for me but it I think it works I've heard other people it works fantastically well right I think you find what works for you and then I've met some people where something works for a while then you've got to change it up I've met some people where one thing works for the rest of their life and that's what they do and I think I have no judgment about which which of those I think you've got to find what is working for you in the moment and then if it's not working for you find what does work for you and then you know and I think that's what the The Genius of ol's book um about living with intentions is like I got to a place in my life where my goals were so rigid that like I had every minute of every day mapped out and it was like 15 hours a day of personal and professional and workout and this and and it was like whoa that for for me that became too much for some people that might work really really well so I don't I have no judgment about whether that's good or bad I just know what works for me and what doesn't work for me and so I think I think having a toolkit around that and knowing what tools exist and then you know making sure those tools work so that you're getting what you want to have not not everybody wants what I want and I don't want what other people want and so it's about getting myself aligned to my path I was telling someone recently like think I'm Catholic so when I go to heaven the one conversation I don't want to have is God saying like hey John you took Randy off my path for Randy I don't want like I don't want it I don't want someone following my vision board I want someone following their vision board or not vision board or whatever but I really I I want to help people along their path for them not my path for them wow that might be a great episode in the future want to take somebody off their path for them that's a that's that's pretty deep so I like that well I did it for a lot of years I mean I I I worked in such a way as a manager where I thought that I knew it was better for them than they did in a very self-important and um non-beneficial way to them very well-meaning by the way I really did deeply care but I was um I I had a set of ERS on where I thought and I told people that I knew it was best for them not explicitly but it wasn't helpful right and so now I want to really help people find their path for them excuse me I want I want to find PE help people find their path for them so they can find their path and then if I can help them along that path I want to help them along that path but I don't want to and I might even offer them like hey have you thought about this or have you thought about that as you know a friend or as a coach or whatever but but but I definitely don't want to be in the business of making someone's decisions about what their path should be like that doesn't seem healthy to me by the way for worth I have my vision board on a poster board on the wall my desk so in my office where I have to walk between my desk and that wall every time or even if I just turn to my left I see it but I see it all the time I have it in a place where when I Journal I try to look at the vision board for 10 or 15 seconds just to take it in for that to align with my journaling um some people want you know we did it as a family a few years years ago with Julie and the kids yeah and she went and bought these great big poster boards right I mean mine's I don't know like two feet by 3 feet probably but she bought these great big ones um so yeah I don't think there's a right my old house I had it on the wall right in front of my desk you know so but I I have a life plan which I think is is too much for most people but my life plan has like on page one it has my core values for me personally it has my personal mission statement it has my the four Ps right which we've talked about which is like what what are the things that I'm skilled at what am I passionate about what am I what's the Mark I want to leave on the world and then how do I want to spend my time talent and treasure which is those four questions about meaning in life and I've summarized them so that's a whole document that I keep and look at but I've summarized them on that document and then I talk about like my keys to success and I've got a 10-year narrative about what my life might be like I think most of that's too much for for most people but I've been doing this since I was 19 years old and in that document is my vision board and so it that whole document aligns top to bottom and it thinks about it certainly contemplates my fitness which is my mind body and spirit and it contemplates my family and friends and my my fun and and how I deal with finance and professional parts of my life and so it's all kind of in that document and and that what that document allows me to do is when I have a thought about it I can go drop that thought into the appropriate part of that framework and know that it's someplace that I don't have to remember it I can go look it up and so that's my that's my index for my life plan and so so you've been do it since you're 19 so it's exactly the same now as it was at 19 yeah no not I think no there's literally not a single part of it the same the words Life Plan might have been there on 19 those words might be on the document today but no I think that the document is 100% different than it was when I was 19 how often do you change it um anytime I have a thought that I want to get down and I don't know where to put it down I'm not sure where it belongs I have a I have an empty page at the back where I just put that thought and then when it becomes clear where that thought belongs I I put it where it belongs or I delete it if it doesn't belong but like you know I had a bucket list at one point that was like I don't know eight pages long of bucket list items and then you know over the years some of those bucket item things I got so I crossed them off a huge number of them I realized weren't that important to me I really didn't want them like just just didn't didn't want them I've done the exact same thing right I'm just thinking mine's a little different than yours I've taken it started out with magazines the original way I did it you take magazines cut cut things out right coll um now I find just using the Google machine and going on the internet and typing what you're looking for works better Randy uses duck ducko for that yes um or brave but uh but I I print stuff up print print it cut it out put it on the board right that's right and soar I do the same thing but I I instead of printing it I get the copy and then I put it on a digital board for me yeah and I'll print it Bo if I want to but I have over the years some things I've accomplished and taken off some things like you said there's I look at I'm like why did I put that on there and it just doesn't resonate with me anymore and I've also taken things I glue I I have glue and I glue them on there I'll just take something and put it over top of the old one or whatever so it's it's a living document and you know one of the ones so I've got I've got the five people that I surround myself with on my vision board in some way and so it's I have mentors on my board I've got my wife is on the board um I've got a picture of me and a certain state of health that I liked on the board um so so there and there's and there's things I struggle with on the board too that I want to get better at you know Health was one of mine two years ago I really committed to health and really failed that commitment and then I got really serious about it the next year and I said okay I'm going to change my calendar and my financial investment in my health and it got I got really serious about it and it made a huge difference and so um at different you know so different years I've had different focus and and so this year is is is a focus a health year and so I'm um I'm strong I've been in 30 years um I'm eating better I'm not eating perfectly this year but I'm eating better um I hit my ideal Target weight so I'm in range now um I look the way that I want to look like so i' I've accomplished a lot of those kind of benchmarks and now it's about finding lifestyle and uh behavioral kind of like how do I keep that going for the next 50 years do you have you have a lot of images I've got images on mine you know I've I've got like a a really nice house on the ocean right which which is something I would like to have at some point I love the ocean but I've also just got words it might be something as simple as fun as a reminder to myself to sometimes just slow down and have some freaking fun right do you do that too or no yeah I have words on mine for sure my my core values are my core values and I have those someplace else but I do have words on there and so I have a couple of like the most important lessons that I've ever learned on there like like 80% intensity is on there and there's a whole lesson that I'm not sure if we've talked about on the podcast or not about 80% intensity that's a really meaningful part of my life and so that those words are on there because um my 100% intensity can be really um corrosive to to relationships and to people and and so um so I try to maintain like 80% as the high threshold for my intensity I try never to go past that unless I'm alone and so um so that's one of the you know and then um another one that's similar that I have the words on there is if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go with others um similar and related to the 80% intensity one but I do have words on there for sure and I see lots of people have their core values on there I think it's great yeah mine I'm just thinking I've got similar to your your I love the watch one right that I've got things where there's a picture and it means something to me that other people may not know what it means there's other things I have on there that are very specific I've got a I've got a section of mine that's just a reminder to travel more and yeah I've just got things that you know it's from places to a suitcase to you know an airplane Etc that that show me that I've got words I've got one of the cool conversations that came up for me and Amber was about our you know how we want to live in retirement what we want to do we want to travel and so we we picked an actual travel budget based on the things we want to do and it's led to this really great conversation about the places we want to go the things we want to see the number itself is immaterial doesn't really matter but but it led to this really cool conversation about dreaming together and talking about the future life we're building together and and the and that led to like okay well where do we want to travel this year and what are the what are the things we want and and it makes for a set of intentions for us that are um where we get to be really intentional about our marriage and not just in the big moments which I would have said earlier in my life I was pretty aware of the big moments um but it's it's helped me to be more intentional about the day-to-day moments too which I think I mean hopefully Amber on the show sometime she can report back whether or not that's accurate I think she would report back that like I'm I'm pretty decent at the at the in between moments too like the the little things the day-to-day moments and and being just um more grateful and and when I see it gratitude say it right see it say it and so I think that's the um yeah so I think that and that relates not just to I think you know marital relationships but friendships and work relationships too I think you know we could all use a little more gratitude in the world and I think we'd get a lot more what we wanted if we just told people how grateful we were for the things and when we see it we say it and so you know pay attention to when people are on Mission and thank them for it I you know it's funny I Ryan who's uh works as my chief of staff is in the room right now doesn't have a microphone I wish I could ask him like do I really like I'm saying I do that like do do I really do that I think I think I think he's he's nodding yes not sure if it's really us or not but it looks sincere to me he he can fact check with Randy Randy sometimes come back another episode be like hey it's the atata so I I'm just thinking as we talk about this I think I think a lot of the power is I'm a big believer that you put out into the universe what you want right you put it out into the world and and that it's I I just I don't know I mean this is a little bit woo woo right I mean it's but I think it's religious it's no different than than if we are praying to God for it or we put it out there but I I so let's talk about that for a minute like what what are your thoughts on that is do you think like how does that work or maybe we don't know how do you agree it works that when you put good things out in the universe or what you want or bad things yeah I think so there's a whole field of discussion around this the secret is probably the most famous book and movie on this topic and then there's Prosperity Gospel is I think the the term for term of art inside of Christianity and so I I should start by saying I'm definitely not a theologian um um and I I don't I don't have a full answer to this one because I think that the there are some in the Prosperity Gospel I think there's some theology that's at least at the very least it's debatable um however in my own experience when I find that I get what I focus on and I think I generally get what I focus on because I worked toward it consciously and subconsciously and so um for me in my faith I pray like it's up to God and I work like it's up to me and and again that's not my that's not my language somebody else said that to me and I thought that's really smart like I'm going to I'm going to work like I have to earn it but I'm going to pray like I I can't earn it and so that I think that's been really helpful in my life and I do think that I do think that when you um it's like when you buy a purple car you start to see purple cars other everywhere I think there's a level of awareness that happens towards things and we move toward so like for me I'll give you a really clear example with gratitude um I used to focus on problems so I could solve problem solve problem solve problem solve but then I found more and more more problems and more more frustration when I started when I started focusing on gratitude I don't think I had any less problems in my life but I recognized all the things to be grateful in addition to and I started just spending energy on that also and life got a lot better and I don't know if there's been more or less problems but but I certainly like my life a lot more when I'm being grateful and so I don't know I I think I danced around the answer I think you're looking for a more direct answer from me but I think I danced around a little bit but I think that's yeah this is things that you're uncomfortable with that's okay it's part of the reason I ask but it's I'm not uncomfortable with it at all I just don't have an answer like I think I think I have certainty around lots of things I have no discomfort here I'm very comfortable with not knowing I don't but I but but I also don't want to hold myself out as like I get it I've thought a lot about this and and where I am in my thinking today is I don't know um and this is a really important part of my spiritual journey is how do you lean into faith in places of uncertainty and so so no I would say I'm not uncomfortable here at all but I definitely don't know I yeah I I believe it works I don't know why it works right I don't know that whether it's praying or putting it on a vision board I do I really believe that thoughts are physical things and it's energy that floats around sure that some of this probably goes back to some iasa and some other stuff here right um that a Randy thing that has made me has made me more convinced of this sure right but I do believe that when you put that out in the universe those thoughts are they're real things they have energy that I'm not smart enough or I I don't claim to understand but if nothing else maybe it is as simple as what you said that it just triggers something in your head that makes you focus on it and therefore makes it happen but regardless it gets the results you want when I and I don't know the science or the evidence well enough to say anything to the contrary and my experience does fit with what you're saying and so I you know I wrote down a goal one time it was a professional goal and I forgotten that I'd written it down and like a number of years later I hit that goal forgetting it was even something I had written down until 10 years later when I found the the piece of paper that I wrote it on and and then I think there's other things where you say I want to go do something like when I did the tour of Mont Blanc with some friends we trained for that trip and and I and I found a huge amount of joy in the preparation for that and so I think for me um for me personally there's some there's some benefit to having something to look forward to and then working toward it you know for my own health um having something look forward to like hiking from Crest deut to Aspen was a real motivator for me to get out and go do some things that I wouldn't have normally done without a deadline and so some of those things are are just me arbitrary Milestones that I want to hit so that I can go do things that are and it's the journey as much as the destination in many of these things and so so I would say that I my experience has been very very well aligned to what you're talking about I'm also very aware that there are parts of the world where people really want things and they put it out there a lot and it's just a different environment that I grew up in it's harder to get from where they are to to where they want to be and so I I don't want to poo poo that either but but my experience has been similar to yours yeah I I'm just thinking of so this was really pretty trans transformational for me this 30 years ago and I don't know if I want to use this person's name because of the content but a friend of mine he was a national champion in Taekwondo and he actually would came in second in the Olympic Tri so he was the alternate but he so now we've named him but he was training don't say about country yeah he was he was training for the Olympics as if he was going and I was helping him train now by helping that meant I held pads while he kicked him okay because I had zero ability or flexibility but he would train for hours and hours and he went to this little gym and he would train and I would get there he was already training and and one time he takes me and my other friend he goes I got to show you this he's like but you can't tell anybody this is the guy that owned the gym was also a professor and he's like this is being funded by the CIA so it's 30 years ago I think we have a statute of limitations probably nobody's going to get killed here but he turns on this computer and it's I think it was like an apple 2C 2E again 30 years ago and there was a computer program and you simply picked one of two pictures there was and this was a little challenging for me because I'm like 40% color blind okay one of them was a picture of Earth from space so if you envision that it's you know it's a lot of blue green mostly ocean the other one was a was from the shore of a wave crashing in so much two distinctly different pictures but much the same colors and the way this computer program as I recall it worked is it started out half the half of the the screen was each picture yep and every as fast as that computer could do calculations it would randomly pick a pixel or it went in order I don't remember and it would just 50/50 it would either keep it the same or change it and the object object of this is you would sit you would pick one of the pictures you would not touch the computer the only thing you would do you would hit the space bar to start you would sit in a chair and think and you would impact what picture came and when I first started this I remember thinking this is crazy this is my brain can't impact the computer but when you start doing it you would realize if you would think like you'd say okay I'm going to focus on the earth and if you focused on Earth the picture of the Earth would come in and if you focused but then you'd get weak and you'd think ocean go away ocean go away or you'd just start think about the ocean and the ocean would come MH and whatever you thought about happened Earth or ocean and it work equally well if you thought about one and my other friend we would start doing it and we got pretty good like when you first started it I don't know sometimes you'd win sometimes you'd lose and you only won when it was 100% one or the other okay and I remember doing this and it hard but then I kind of became obsessed with it my friend did do and we would do it every day and we got I could beat it in 10 or 15 seconds 100% of the time like whatever I thought of I have so many questions I could do it every single time I could beat it by the way I have I have spent hours looking for this on the internet okay I found let's start with this was it one single floppy disc this thing ran on no idea I don't remember John don't remember but you would sit we would sit there so then what we started doing it became too easy to Beat It we would sit Side by Side Y we would predeter I'm going to take the ocean and you're going to take the Earth or vice versa we would hit this we would hit it and we would go and that was even more fascinating because if one of us would start getting an advantage all of a sudden we didn't it was two different things and it would go it could end so fast because if one of us started thinking Earth and the other one would think Earth go away it was unbelievable how fast it would fill in and be the and there was no other sensor attached to the computer nothing you would sit in a chair but there was no other sensor you knew about was an apple 2E or 2C no nothing I mean it was just a computer sitting on a desk all right so Randy the next question I have for you is who do you really work for but and and by the way then what I wanted to do is I wanted to see what would happen if I would just hit the space bar and walk away and we'd go downstairs and work help our friend work out and come back two hours later and it would still be run every time it would still be running it would so the program what happened if you walked downstairs worked out and thought about the ocean from downstairs never tried that should have tried that that would have been great so anyway you can find things on the internet now the last time I looked I think I found an experiment from Stanford and another one from MIT that were similar over the Internet one of them was a pendulum that would swing from side to side and another was a clock that would either randomly go clockwise or counterclockwise and you could do it over the internet in a server sitting at Stanford this is this is several years so people can Google this I'm sure they're still up there somewhere Buck of things I know absolutely nothing about and find very fascinating so that was a I I think that ties into to I'm I'm more interviewing you here so I kind of tookus on this Rabbit Trail but I I that transformed a lot of my belief systems like witnessing something that I would have said was 100% impossible that definitely changed my view of this 30 years ago yeah I we did 30 years ago we didn't know what gravity like how gravity worked and we do now science is an amazing thing so I that's and that's why when you said that I'm uncomfortable that I C and said no I'm actually very comfortable just very uncertain I think there's just you know there there's areas right think I'm I'm I'm an expert and I know I'm an expert and there's places that I just definitely don't know and so things where I just operate by faith and this is one of those areas where it's like I'm just I don't fully understand the the you know what the secret calls the law of attraction or you know some people call a Prosperity Gospel or any like I I don't fully understand that but I do know that I want to be grateful and I do know that people who are grateful with for for what they have tend to feel like they have more abundance as a perspective and I just choose to have that perspective and so I'm I'm very comfortable with that I think too we've all seen people that they think about being sick and then they just whether that physically makes them sick or they think they're sick or it attracts it to I don't know I think I think the people that yeah you know hydroch hypochondria yeah that I joke to someone once that that I thought they had acute intermittent hypochondria just a yeah anyway that's right but you know and um like I want to be okay like I I I'm not going to understand everything and I'm just I'm really okay with that I think I think and I know people are like if I can't if I can't understand the underpinning thing then I can't you know I can't then then it's not must not be true and I just I I don't have the capacity to grasp everything and so I want to be able to AC accept some things on faith I saw this really great article I don't know if it's true conversation or not but it's a great story where um someone was talking about Good and Evil and they said you know um you know why did God create evil as an example and the explanation that was given was really cool it's like you know do you believe in cold let's go through that do you believe in cold yeah yeah cold doesn't actually exist cold is actually a description of the absence of heat in physics and so what you're really describing is not actually cold is not a thing cold is describing the absence of a thing it's describing the absence of heat and so this in the story the person was saying that evil is an absence of good it's not something separate and distinct and and they went on to describe this in a couple of different ways that you know it wasn't it wasn't that it was something it was the absence of something and they used a couple other examples that I don't recall off the top of my head the cold and hot one was the one that really really stuck with me oh light and darkness so the darkness isn't really a thing it's the absence of light and so that really bent my mind I was like wow that's a really interesting perspective on you know on the on the origin stories if you're a Christian so anyway I I don't this is not a a podcast about that but it got me thinking like there's a there there are certain boundaries to my and limitations to my knowledge about things and there are some things I accept on faith gravity I accept on faith I know that we understand it now as a scientific Community I don't understand it still but there are people who can explain gravity scientifically where they couldn't 20 years ago or 10 years ago and but I've always accepted gravity on faith like I know that if I you know jump off a rock I'm I'm going down took I took us way down a rabbit Trail but I think it was it was interesting to me so hopefully it's interesting to those listening um let's uh let's go back to just the impact of this on on a team on culture you run a company missions vision boards like what yeah we do vision boards with people on boarding in our companies generally speaking I now that you're saying I'm thinking I need to go back and make sure that we're having a little bit more Fidelity inside of our onboarding and annual planning process but that where it's really important is keeping people motivated and understanding what motivates someone so that you're helping them get what they want so in our companies I if we're aligned and someone Works in my company if I'm helping them get what they want and that's aligned to what the company needs then I can really focus on helping them get what they want and and they feel that and they like that and so I'm really committed to helping the people that I work with get what they want and I think they would report back to you that that's true and that I put a significant amount of time thinking about their well-being from their perspective not their well-being from my perspective but like you know if I'm thinking about like their retirement and their finances like what are things that I can do as a manager to impact that and so um yeah so I think yeah and and I'm not perfect at it for sure but you know vision boards are a way of understanding what is important to people so with a role of a leader how does a company measure this how do they evaluate if they're well this actually fits into alignment right an alignment means you understand what motivates your people how to get that motivation aligned with the company wants so that you're actually helping the individual and the person both win and sometimes that's just not perfectly aligned someone's doing it because they want to make money so they can go have their hobby after which is totally fine by the way um sometimes they're doing it because the work aligns perfectly also fine and so under understanding how to keep that alignment is really really important for people and that that means helping people um sometimes migrate through the company you know I worked with someone at one of my companies once where they were coming back into the workforce they took a couple promotions at the company and then left for the next job and and when they left for the next job they were um literally apologetic they were like hey you know I'm sorry but I've got to leave and I was like well I hear the I'm got to leave but you don't want me an apology like we both knew that you were you know you were you were going through your career and this was a stop along the way it wasn't the whole career and would I like to continue working with you of course but the next step is more important and so when I got comfortable with the fact that someone's Next Step being away from the company that may not be best for me personally it was good for them that was more important to me then um it became much easier to work with really quality people and to really invest in them and not worry about when they were going to leave like that was a big watershed moment for me as a manager and so having a vision board helps you understand where it is along on the way and it also helps me to see when they're going to leave so I can make sure that I'm prepared for that in a way that's helpful for the company and for them what what would you tell somebody if they want to keep let's let's talk about the mission again for specifically for a second how do you keep how do you keep a top of mind for somebody you got to keep it in front of people for sure like we have knowledge bases and we talk about it regularly what the mission of the company is and we and we bring that back to once a year like long-term planning and then annual planning and then quarterly planning and in weekly meetings we review the quarterly plan every week and so it's always kind of a line top to bottom in that way yeah what should I have asked you today I think about Mission drift that's the one thing we didn't talk about Mission drift is destructive to an organization and there are lots of missions that have drifted from one thing to another I think and I'm going to speak about something I know very little about which is the rural electric commission they have a massive budget for the US government I'm pretty sure that electricity has been sorted out in rural communities in this country for a very long time and so uh I think they still have a budget right now and they probably are doing great work on something else that I don't know about so I'm not trying to actually call them out or anything but like would it be better for an organization like that to be shut down than have a new organization come in maybe the same workers same employees or or call it something different or change the mission you know but like it it but not letting the mission drift and I think there are lots of companies where the mission drifts and I think that's that's where you get into trouble and so when I work on the board of directors of a company I work very hard to understand the Mission and then I take it upon myself to make sure that I work against Mission drift Mission drift means strategic drift it means wasted resources it means misalignment it means all the things that we don't want in an organization and so I think being super clear about Mission means being super clear about not allowing the mission to drift which is different than Mission change and Mission change can happen like when when you know Microsoft said hey we don't have a PC on every desktop but close enough time to move to the next like that I got it like that's not mission d drift that's Mission shift to like a brand new thing but I think Mission drift can be really really dangerous for an organization I see this with nonprofits that are trying to do too much outside of their original Mission like that can be a bad thing um I see where someone's strategy is too broad and and you know too much too much lack of focus strategy means you have no focus at all and that can be really bad for a company so I think Mission drift is a thing that leaders need to really pay attention to and Surround surround themselves with um advisers board directors you you know that keep them very well aligned U and that's you know a startup might have a change of mission because it's trying to find its place in the comp in the in the marketplace but that's different than Mission drift yeah yeah I mean the example you use a government organization has the luxury of they don't they're held less accountable and they're they're they keep getting tax dollars they're not going to go broke the company can't do that because they'll likely go to business yeah like you know and again I think in in an organization like Harvard which is one of the most respected universities in the entire world they weren't they weren't started with the mission they have today and so I think their Board of Trustees would be well served to decide if that's been deliberate which would be great if it was or if it was drift I don't know the answer because I'm not part of those conversations at all but I think just making sure that organizations understand um where the danger of drift is coming from and making sure they don't drift is a really important conversation leaders need to be having and again deliberate shift is awesome unintentional drift not awesome else what else didn't I ask that I should have asked I think I think asking how that applies to the vision board same thing right like re-evaluate once a year but don't Don't Drift throughout the year so yeah okay well this has been fantastic as always um listeners again […] uh have some fun just go in there there's not a right or wrong way to do it we probably didn't talk enough about that it's just put something down on paper like just get it started and make make adjustments it's a living document until you stamp it and so just keep trying it on until it fits yeah figure out what works for you y and then feel free to reach out too you know we're available so we do have resources but also happy to talk great thanks John been great thanks Randy

Mission and Vision Board