Everyone wants to know what will happen to Apple’s vision now that Steve Jobs is leaving. The bigger question is: what will happen to the vision of your company when you leave? Most people think being a visionary is something you are born with and not a skill you can develop. Even though some people gravitate towards vision easier than others, it is something that can and should be taught in your organization.
Steve Jobs epitomizes a visionary because he is a genius at knowing what the market wants even before consumers know. What Jobs did instinctively at Apple was look at their core competencies, the available technology, emerging uses for both and then create something new and exciting. He went through a process of listening to his company and the marketplace. It is the art of hearing the dialog between consumers and technologies.
You can have a process that will help your people understand how to create tomorrow’s dialog today. This process involves learning how to listen and how to see where the conversation is going. The right tools and processes will allow you to initiate the next dialog with your customers instead of allowing your competitors to have the first word in tomorrow’s conversation of products and services.
