The Next Chapter Won’t Write Itself

There’s a moment I still remember from my corporate career.

Once a year, the entire buying organization got called to a national sales meeting. Executives took the stage and delivered something I can only describe as a vision in motion.

They talked about our customers: who they were, what was changing in their world, what they were dreaming about for their homes, and how we were going to meet them there.

We were going to bring trend and beauty and excitement into people’s everyday lives at a price everyone could afford.

The meeting would end with big name entertainment. (One year it was KISS, in full makeup and platform boots, and every one of us was dancing in the aisles.)

I left knowing exactly why my work mattered. I knew the story I was part of. I knew where we were going.

That wasn’t a pep rally. That was vision doing its job.

What Happens When The Vision Becomes The Ceiling?

I’m working with a client who has built a remarkable business.

Over nine years, the business expanded into new territories and added new product lines.

And then it plateaued.

Not because anything went wrong, but because everything went right!

The vision was realized. It needed a new chapter.

Without a new North Star, the smart and capable senior leadership team was going through the motions.

The young sales reps, the hungry ones who want to make their mark, were restless in a way they couldn’t quite name.

Early in a career, you don’t just want a paycheck. You want to be able to say, “I was part of making this the company every A-list client called first.”

You want a story worth telling.

There was no rally cry. No story to put themselves in anymore.

Why We Need the Vision

Here’s what the research confirms and what I’ve seen play out with my clients.

Vision doesn’t just point people toward a destination. It answers a deeper question: Who do I get to become by being part of this?

When that answer is clear, engagement isn’t something you manufacture. It shows up on its own.

Brian Chesky understood this when Airbnb was still just a scrappy room-rental app. He could have written a vision about market share or bookings. Instead he wrote two words: belong anywhere.

It reoriented everything! How they hired, how they built the product, how hosts thought about their role. The company went from transactional to transformational.

Same company. New story. Completely different energy.

💡Try this

A revenue goal is a finish line. A real vision is a horizon — something you move toward that keeps receding just enough to stay worth chasing.

Here’s a simple way to find yours.

Write the sentence your best young hire would put on their LinkedIn in five years. Not your revenue goal. Not your market position. The sentence that describes what they were part of. What they helped build. What they can say they were there for.

If you can write it in under a minute, you already know where you’re going.

If you’re staring at a blank page, that’s your answer too.

Either way, now you know.

Laurie