A clear and exciting long-term goal (think 10-30 years!) – with milestones to celebrate – is a starting point for building a sustainable business with a strong culture.

I wrote about this in more detail in a previous blog post: Think long term, document your future and create a high performing team

For most team members, however, 10 years is an impossibly long time. It can feel like a lifetime – and far too long to imagine themselves into the future.

That's why, once your 10+-year goal is determined, I believe breaking the 10 year goal into manageable chunks – three year goals, is the a system to bring the ultimate goal to life. My experience with these 10 year goals and then 3 year chunks is at The Physio Co, where we call these shorter term goals a 'Painted Picture Vision’.

Even planning more than two to three years into the future can be a challenge, particularly new graduates and younger members of a team. Therefore, it's important to provide as much detail as you can in terms of what you want your business and culture to look, act and feel on a particular date into the future.

(You can read more about how we make our Painted Pictures work at The Physio Co in my book, Culture Is Everything (Chapter Five).

Leaning into the future

I first learnt about the Painted Picture concept from business coach Cameron Herold who once described to me how winter Olympic athletes, especially the brave souls who compete in the ski jump event, regularly use this Painted Picture vision concept to envision their success.

He said they would visualise the perfect, gold medal-winning jump in great detail, and then review a written description over and over in training when planning for success at the end of a four-year cycle to the Olympics.

By leaning into the future to describe how they would perform, and then working obsessively to bring that vision to life, the skiers were attempting to create their own future.

Are you ready?

As leaders committed to creating a high performing team via a world-class culture, we can use the same approach to lean into the future and describe how our business and culture will look, act and feel on a certain date in the future.

Then we take that vision.

Share it with our team.

Review it daily.

And obsess over bringing it to life.