Why!

Why are you building this product, providing this service, or starting this company? If you can't answer these questions, ask yourself this one; are all your teams working towards the same outcome?

While it may seem naff, cliched or even trite, you should be creating a simple Vision Statement for every major product or project you undertake. This is a short description of the better future that you are all working towards. Simply defined, a good vision statement should be:

• short and memorable
• written as a future state
• inspirational and describing a compelling future
• easily be understood by a wide variety of stakeholders
• verifiable while avoiding target dates

For example:

Career Symphony, through collaboration with a variety of partners around the world, will improve the ability for professionals to manage their career by developing and implementing a simple to use online product that can underpin broader career research, planning, ongoing management and mentoring.

As I say in my book; "You can expect significant performance improvement..., but only if everyone is pointing in the same direction."