Vision and Happiness

 

There I was, having a nice talk with my previous manager about life in general. At one point the conversation hit on back when the branch first opened and our culture and how happy I was when I moved into the branch. I cannot remember why the next comment came out, but here it is: “I already knew your vision.”

What is that? And why is that tied to Happiness?

Uhm… Vision, as in Mission & Vision Statement 101? Yes, that’s the one. As in “describe your future state in five years. Where will you be doing what you do?” That sort of vision. You have some personal version of that, everyone does; or at least I hope they do. How close you come to that vision is pretty much how happy you are.

On top of that, there is also a persona that is presented in your workplace. In fact, I am pretty sure that there are some people with personas that are tailored to the social or work occasion. Woot! Not me, thanks, I am trying to have only one vision.

Moving forward, I think I see where having personal and professional visions that match pretty closely could be an important factor in “how happy am I?” answers. Don’t you like it better when things line up neatly? On a business angle, your general happiness in terms of workplace/profession satisfaction will therefore occur when the company vision and execution of that vision come closest to your personal vision.

How well does your personal vision line up with your work? How does that equate to happy for you? It might be that your vision and your execution of that vision serve as a change agent for the good in your culture. Is your vision causing parts of your life to be unhappy? Could it be that the mismatch between personal and work is too large?

There is a solid connection between employee satisfaction/happiness and ability to deliver to their customer. And create happy customers. Who comment to other people they know. Which generates the highest ROI of any sales/marketing plan ever. I will wait right here for you to finish reading.

Well, that’s nice, but what about your vision?

So, great question – and here it is – both personal and professional. I think the professional vision is an outshoot of the personal.

“I want my customer so happy they talk about us on the golf course”

And I will close with this L.P. Jacks quotation that I like:

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

YMMV