One of my best friends moved 2000 miles away from me to set up a new life with his family in Colorado.
Needless to say, we knew we had to find ways to stay connected. So we decided to plan an adventure trip together and settled on climbing a mountain. Neither of us had any experience with mountain climbing, but we were determined to make it happen.
After some research, we set our sights on climbing Denali (Mount McKinley), a mountain with an elevation of 1 to 3, even though we knew we had much to learn and practice before attempting it. We made it our long-term goal to climb Denali within the next 10 years. In one sense, we called this our big long-term vision.
In the meantime, we made a plan and would gain experience by climbing smaller mountains with the ultimate goal of climbing Denali. We learned that there are 12 different paths to reach the summit of Denali, each with different views, challenges, and lengths. However, no matter what path we took, the end result of reaching the top would still be the same.
Anyone who is an experienced climber will tell you that there will be several times along the path when something will happen that will cause your plans to get completely scrambled. Or at other times, you will find yourself tired, frustrated, and annoyed at yourself, you’re climbing buddy, your equipment, or even the mountain itself.
The best way to mitigate the downside of those types of situations is to clearly define ahead of time a set of agreements on how you should act and behave while on the climb. We talked about what was most important to us and how we wanted to show up for ourselves and for each other throughout the experience. At this point, we had decided which mountain we were going to climb, which path we would take up that mountain, and how we would show up throughout the climb.
Any team can use this process to create a vision, mission, and core values.
The Break Down:
Vision: This is the long-term world that you want to make happen.
Mission: This is how you will make that long-term vision happen.
Core values: These are how you and your team will act while completing your mission toward your long-term vision.
In our next Blog, we will continue breaking down and diving deeper into the Vision, Mission, and Core Values.
