If these two things aren’t in balance, your business is doomed.

Some of us are great at questioning everything, disrupting the status quo, and seeing new possibilities at every turn—a huge asset in business. If this is you, you never quite know how you’re going to “get there,” but you always know where you want to go (albeit ten steps ahead of where you are right now) and that keeps you engaged and excited to show up every day.

Others are much better at getting sh*t done. They can see what’s next on the horizon and know exactly how to move the needle in such a way that dots all the i’s and crosses all the t’s effectively. If this is you, you don’t particularly care to know where your business is going long-term, but you do know how to execute a plan in a thoughtful and detail-oriented manner.

For any business to function optimally and truly thrive, the owner must find a way to balance both visionary and executionary factors exceedingly well.

In my early entrepreneurial days, I was 90% visionary and only 10% executionary. I was convinced that if I kept my ideal future at the forefront of my mind, for both myself and the company, everything would pay off in the end. Needless to say, my first business died a slow and painful death before it ever made the impact I dreamt that it would 🫠.

While I have a natural propensity for forward-thinking and am really good at it, a lot of the day-to-day operations of my business were falling through the cracks. I didn’t care for details and, instead, trusted that it would all work out. I pushed things through because I was already five steps ahead in my mind (patience is not my strong suit) and sick of waiting for projects to be finished. I was always finding corners to cut so that I could see results faster. Consequently, I wasted a lot of time building what I thought were foundational aspects of my business, to “save time in the future,” only to later realize that it was all useless because my vision had changed yet again.

On the flip side, I’ve witness countless entrepreneurs who are so executionary that they have no idea what their greater purpose is or what’s going to happen further down the pipeline (in fact, there is no pipeline). These people live in the present and love seeing tasks get checked off their “to do” list, telling themselves that progress is being made and truly believing it. They focus on moving the company from A to B in the most effective way possible, then six months later look back and discover that it was pointless because:

Both approaches will end in failure simply because they don’t provide a business with everything it needs to thrive 🪴.

TRUTH #1

Without effective execution, even the most inspiring and creative vision won’t materialize. Ambitious goals must be broken down into actionable steps with tangible results and realistic timelines; dreamers must be brought down to earth.

TRUTH #2

With no clear vision, a business will lack direction and purpose. This can lead to missed opportunities, misallocated resources, and burned out team members. A compelling vision is needed to focus the founder’s efforts on what matters most.

Keeping both of these opposite truths in mind will help you determine where your personal strengths and weak spots are and how these translate into your company’s blueprint on a day-to-day basis.

While some days will be 80% visionary and 20% executionary, and others the other way around, everything must average out at 50:50 at the end of the week, month, year, etc.

Just like how you have to balance your books, you also have to balance your approach to leadership and overall decision-making.

Let’s look at a couple more specific examples to illustrate.

Theranos was a health tech company that wanted to help humans utilize very small amounts of blood for diagnostic and monitoring purposes. The founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, had a fantastic vision that everyone bought into—revolutionizing blood testing as we knew it. As a result, the company was able to get tons of investors on board and experience a lot of traction early on. However, Elizabeth had massive executional oversights to the point where she not only destroyed her company, but was also found guilty of fraud. The technology simply didn’t work as promised, and Theranos drowned in a tsunami of legal and financial issues until its eventual demise in 2018. Had Elizabeth paid more attention to operational standards and important ethical considerations, things could have turned out very differently.

Conversely, a great example of a business that was fantastic at executing but fell short when it came to visionary leadership was well-known chain, Blockbuster. In the 1990s and early 2000s, people couldn’t get enough of their VHS home movies and video game rentals (I visited often with my family and loved it!). But even though they expanded their stores and had rapid early success, Blockbuster leaders could not see that on-demand entertainment services and digital streaming was the way of the future. By the time they had caught on to what was happening, it was too late. They filed for bankruptcy in 2010 (everyone saw it coming except them) and their entire franchise collapsed.

As you can see, a company can operate in its “happy place” when its owner dreams big, sets long-term goals, and allows themselves to imagine what the business could become, yet also puts practical measures in place to turn their vision into reality. That’s the way forward for any freedom-focused entrepreneur.

As a visionary, one of the most valuable skill sets I’ve developed has been to take an aspiration and general direction for my company and turn it into a viable, sustainable business through:

If you’re much more the hands on, practical type and struggle to think about the future, consider trying these things to achieve a better balance:

In summary, the success of any freedom-focused business depends on its CEO being able to visualize the future of the company and carry out what’s needed to turn a profit. See where you fall on the spectrum, then focus your efforts on the other stuff so that your blind spots don’t hinder your personal or professional growth 👀.

If you’d like personalized support in balancing your vision with effective execution to build a sustainable freelance writing business, explore how The ‘Thriving & Free’ Medical Writer Program™ can help.