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Updated: April 9, 2025 How To

To strengthen a business, start with clarity of vision

By Laura McDowell, Certified EOS Implementer

Why vision matters more than you think. Ask any business owner what they want and the answers will vary: more growth, more balance, fewer fires to put out. Dig a little deeper and you will discover something surprising: many have not defined what “success” looks like.

Instead, the vision lives the owner’s head, half-formed or unspoken. This creates real problems like misalignment, confusion, and stalled progress.

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Laura McDowell

I work with entrepreneurial leadership teams every day who feel stuck. They are growing, but it is messy. They put out fires, struggle to make decisions, and feel like they are constantly on a treadmill.

There are simple, straightforward tools to help businesses define their vision, gain traction, and create healthy, aligned teams. Often, the answer is not adding more revenue, marketing or people. It is stepping back to clarify where you are going and how you will get there.

A strong vision, and aligning others with it, serves as the foundation for everything you want to achieve.

What vision really means

 Vision is not just about where you want to be in 10 years; it is about shared clarity on where you're going and how you will get there. A strong vision brings focus, fuels alignment, and gives people a reason to care. 
Visons cannot just live in the owner's head.  An actionable vision answers key questions like:

  • Who are we?
  • What do we do?
  • Who do we serve?
  • Where are we going?
  • What matters most to us?

When those answers are clearly defined and shared across the leadership team, everything gets easier —decisions, priorities, hiring, even day-to-day communication. It is not just about setting a destination; it is about agreeing on the path forward and ensuring everyone is aligned.

Break down your vision into a practical, usable format that helps teams define and align around what matters most. If you want to move purposefully, your entire team needs to understand the vision just as clearly as you do.

Clarity creates confidence. Something shifts when a leadership team has a clear vision. Conversations become more focused. Decisions come faster. Priorities align. Teams stop second-guessing and start moving forward.

Clarity gives your team permission to stop chasing distractions. It empowers them to say yes to what fits the vision and no to what does not. This focus builds momentum and keeps your organization from drifting.

Clarity does not mean complexity. The simplest visions are the most effective. They are boiled down to the essentials so they can be easily remembered, shared, and used to guide everyday decisions.

When vision is vague or inconsistent, people fill in the blanks, usually not in the same way. When it is clear, shared, and reinforced, it becomes a powerful filter for everything you do.

Seeing the difference vision makes

Recently, I worked with a leadership team that realized just how misaligned they were. The business was stable, but they felt stuck. They unknowingly had different ideas about the future: one leader envisioned aggressive expansion, while another assumed they would maintain their current size indefinitely. The friction showed up in conflicting priorities, unclear goals, and slow decision-making.

Once we sat down to clarify their vision and get everyone aligned on where the company was headed, it was transformative. The result was a mutual plan for intentional growth that would enable them to serve more clients with a relatively lean, close-knit team.  The plan entailed a new, more centrally located office space to support growth and enhance collaboration. They built tangible, achievable milestones toward realistic goals that would enable them to realize their shared vision.

Their meetings became more focused. They began to solving problems that truly mattered and started making meaningful progress toward a shared future.

What comes next

Clarifying your vision is not a one-time exercise. It is a discipline. It requires you to revisit, refine, and reinforce it regularly with your leadership team and throughout the organization. When done well, it becomes the foundation for everything else: how you make decisions, set goals, and solve problems.

Clarity alone is not enough. A great vision without execution is just a dream. In the next article, we will explore how to bring that vision to life through accountability, discipline, and actions that drive real results.

Whether you are leading a small business or a growing team, the path to long-term success starts with getting clear on where you are going and ensuring everyone is rowing in the same direction.

About the author

Laura McDowell is a Certified EOS Implementer who works with entrepreneurial leaders in Maine to clarify their vision, gain traction and build healthy, high-performing teams. She also leads a peer group for the Institute for Family-Owned Business and speaking frequently on businesses growth with intention. She will be part of a panel on April 16 at an Institute for Family-Owned Business program, "From Vision to Action — Unlocking Family Business Potential." Register here

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