10 - Beginning With An End In Mind
I have come to see that three things are required to be best placed to start a new startup:
A mission
A vision
An actionable strategy and plan
When Winston Churchill said “this is not the end. It is not...the beginning of the end. But it is...the end of the beginning” - he could have been talking about this post. This is the conclusion of the prologue of StartingUpAgain. Posts 4, 5 and 6 explained how I went about selecting a problem space which culminated in my mission of the emancipation of expert knowledge. Posts 8 and 9 explained how I formed an actionable strategy and plan within transfer pricing. But what do I mean by vision?
“To succeed you must study the endgame before everything else” - Chess Grandmaster Jose Raul Capablanca
Mission is the problem. The opportunity that exists for things to be better. The actionable strategy and plan provides direction on what needs to be done tomorrow, next month, next quarter. Vision is the endgame. How things look when your startup is better addressing that problem; seizing that opportunity. It’s your best guess of how things should look 10-20 years into the future. It’s not a permanent endgame. There is no permanent endgame. True missions are asymptotes; games that never end. Progress gives rise to previously unimaginable needs and opportunities. Vision is as far as you can stretch yourself to see into the horizon today.
Alongside forming the actionable strategy and plan for transfer pricing, I also wrote a vision thesis for the future of expert knowledge. This post explains what I did and why.
What I did
I wrote a 3,000 word document of my vision for the emancipated future of expert knowledge. I wrote this document in long form prose, but with no concern for grammar or style.
The first section summarised the problems with expert knowledge today as the starting point - a slightly longer version of the emancipation of expert knowledge post. The second section outlined what the Mayday enhanced future of expert knowledge would look like at a high level. This culminated in the following summary:
“Mayday will be the platform, the everything firm, at the centre that clients and experts interact with. We will cater to as much of the 4 stages of expert knowledge, across as broad a range of expert areas, as possible. We will be synonymous with delivering the best, cheapest and fastest expert knowledge. Knowledge that we’ve helped you identify that you need. We’ll leverage economies of scale in both cost efficiencies (e.g. single account management, client take on and productisation) and scope for our solutions (we can do more and better - e.g. Netflix with budget for programmes and films). We’ll leverage network effects in terms of providing experts with the greatest possible income potential for their skills and clients with access to the greatest pool of experts.”
I then got into some detailed micro-examples. I wrote how I saw these four expert knowledge scenarios playing out in the Mayday enhanced future:
Client expanding into a foreign country
Client has an employee bringing an unfair dismissal claim
Client is looking to acquire another business
Client is undertaking a change management project to transform its organisational structure after a 50% growth in team size in the last year
Why I did it
The actionable strategy and plan for transfer pricing provided a route. But how could I be sure it was the right route unless I had a clear idea of where I wanted to end up? I wrote previously about my beachhead criteria for the initial slice of expert knowledge that ended up being transfer pricing. Without a vision thesis, I’d be relying on blind luck that the transfer pricing slice would prove to be a beachhead, not an island.
I wrote the vision thesis in long form prose because I like writing. It helps clarify my thinking. It was also for accountability. I have learnt from experience that, in my head and even in a slide deck or summarised form, inconsistencies and gaps can hide in plain sight. But in long form there is nowhere to hide. As Mortimer Adler so accurately put it:
“The person who says they know what they think but cannot express it usually does not know what they think”
It’s important to stress that this vision thesis is the opposite of carved in stone. The only thing I can guarantee about it is that it will be proven wrong. And that’s fine. That’s why the title of this post is beginning with “an” end in mind not “the” end. As new insights and learnings come in, I will refine it accordingly. And then check that the current strategy and plan is aligned with that revised vision.
Michelangelo said “every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it”. That’s a brilliant metaphor for entrepreneurship. Every good vision has a viable business inside of it and it is the task of the entrepreneur to discover it. My vision thesis is the block of stone to start with.
And that’s a wrap….of the prologue. Across these first ten posts I’ve covered how I decided whether and when to start a new startup, how I chose a mission and an initial business to build and, in this post, how I went about defining my vision. Next week will be the start of the next chapter of StartingUpAgain as we get into the present day progress, problems & plans. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!