Rule Four- Find a Vision that Blinds you

I have a vision. I have been to the mountain top. Surely this is the true path to transformation? I have seen the shopping mall, I mean promised land. My mission is to shop till I drop.

Perhaps I am an innovator – sounds more sexy in French, “an entrepreneur,”  and I have an amaz-on-ing vision about a new way to do shopping on line, but I can’t get anyone to see it.

The reason is I don’t quite see it myself. So lets  call in consultants, have strategy planning sessions and work out a business plan and outline the deliverables and the time lines. Isn’t that what they teach in any MBA. The blind leading the bland to be more blunt about who is right.

OK, but then, new ways of doing things gradually open up new vistas way beyond what we can see at the start. Vision if it is truly vision, is usually something that  dazzles you with its light before you see any of the details. You sense a new horizon of possibility opening up, one that only expands as it evolves.

From the planes, you see the pass through the  distant hills and  as you proceed toward and through them, you see the vast plateaus atop the mountains.  That is the map of change. Quite different from the story of change the biographies will tell you,  that pretend they knew it all along. How boring.

Perhaps we should start with blind spots– not VISION, for starting a business. Imagine a title that says “The way to success is to find your blind spots. Or find your goals in the gaps.”  What about that?  I can’t find a cure for cancer. I can’t solve the Middle East conflict. I can’t seem to elect a president who can unite the nation. We cannot close the gap between the rich and the poor.  We cannot deliver fast internet service in our country town.

“I can’t see it” is the reason you go looking,  just as getting lost is the reason you go searching, for a way through.  Because your vision is blurry and confuses you is not the reason you shut down the enterprise. Its the reason you start it.

Prophets and saints are visited by visions. If  your vision is something you see so clearly, it is not  a vision like those inspired by God. That supreme immanence is usually something you can’t look at straight. Moses was warned, you look at me and you will die.  It is the vision that blinds you that is most likely to bind you. Or just ask Saint Paul – how was the trip to Tarsus? Fell off the horse? Struck blind? For Christ’s sake, don’t think of starting up anything!