Some companies I have coached on creating a Painted Picture have done an amazing job.

Red Balloon Days in Sydney, Australia, did a great job with their Painted Picture.  They made it jump off the page by having a designer use creative typography–cool fonts, animation, colors and varied type sizes–to keep the reader engaged and excited.  Email me if you’d like to read it.

Nurse Next Door in Vancouver, Canada, did a brilliant job constructing their Painted Picture. They brought it to life by creating a simple PowerPoint slide show complete with audio where co-founder Ken Sim reads out the Painted Picture while it’s being highlighted with photos and graphics. The visuals are an excellent feature, and get the reader engaged while anchoring ideas. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Tina Turner song they used (Kidding! Sort of) – but loved when they shared their Painted Picture on YouTube.

Sebastian Tondeur, the CEO of MCI based in Geneva, filmed a fantastic introduction to his company’s Painted Picture.  He stood in front of a green screen, and then had company graphics inserted.  He explained what the Painted Picture was and why he’d written it.  Sebastian’s company was operating in twenty-five countries when I helped him write the Painted Picture. Afterwards, he brought me to a company meeting to meet with the leaders of each country’s division so I could explain the idea behind the concept of a Painted Picture to them.  It was a great way to introduce the idea and instantly start to trickle it down to all eight hundred employees.

All of the Painted Picture Hall of Famers did exactly what you’re supposed to do with the exercise: they pushed beyond the drab corporate-speak and confining metrics, and answered the simple question, “What’s really possible for our company?”

See your Painted Picture as the ultimate opportunity to make your company shine.

A great example of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?’s painted picture in action was when one of our amazing marketing managers Andrea Baxter said, “Can you imagine our company name on Starbucks cups?” I thought she was kinda nuts for suggesting such an idea, but I didn’t say anything.  When she said, “Don’t worry about how it’ll happen. As long as you can see it three years from now, I’ll make it happen,” I knew she was nuts, but I loved her passion and conviction.

A few months later Andrea told us we’d soon be on ten million Starbucks cups across North America–for free–with a quote and the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? name on it.  Nice!

Here’s the cool part:  Starbucks told Andrea that they’d put a quote from our founder on the cups but not the company name. In response, Andrea told Starbucks, “No, you have to put the company name on the cup!  That’s part of our vision.  It says so on our wall!” She sent Starbucks a picture of the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? ‘Can You Imagine?’ wall and convinced them to include the company name. Her belief in the idea helped the company achieve our goal of getting 1-800-GOT-JUNK? on ten million cups of Starbucks coffee.

Brian’s quote on Starbucks cups:  “It’s difficult for people to get rid of junk. They get attached to things and let them define who they are. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that you are what you can’t let go of.”  Brian Scudamore, CEO, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

Make your painted picture stick.  An unwavering vision that comes to pass will be celebrated 100 times more than something you’re willing to compromise on.

One day when I was still at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? we were adding to the ‘Can You Imagine?’ wall, and I tossed out the idea of being studied by Harvard Business School for a future case study.

I offered it up almost as a joke, but I really could see Harvard studying 1-800-GOT-JUNK? because we wanted to build a world-class brand.

When Harvard did eventually do a case study on what we’d built, it further proved that you could achieve what you conceived and believed.

‘Conceive, believe and achieve’ became a mantra for us, and when Harvard learned about 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, it wasn’t by accident—it was because of our renowned wall.

The front entrance wall was used to express our desire to be included in a Harvard case study.  Eventually someone visiting 1-800-GOT-JUNK? said, “Hey, I know someone at Harvard who approves the cases, would you like an introduction?”

If we didn’t commit to the vision by writing it on the wall, it wouldn’t have happened. Either way, what we conceived and believed—getting into a Harvard case study—was actually achieved.

I’d love to hear what you’re visions are for your company.  Share them here…

Creating a Painted Picture in order to reverse engineer your success is something that made intuitive sense to me.

I’ve since learned that it’s far from intuitive for everyone else.

Most people don’t think about the steps that are needed for personal or business success, and those that do can become easily frustrated with the planning process.

In 1998, when I was first exposed to visualization at an Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) meeting.  I started to think of this whole process as ‘leaning out into the future,’ which many people find helpful when they’re trying to understand this process. Eight years later, I heard another Vancouver entrepreneur, David Chalk, describe visualization as ‘leaning out into the future,’ too. Obviously, it made sense to people to think about the process this way.

A few of the other entrepreneurs from my EO Forum Group also got excited about this process and began to use visualization and the reverse engineering it in our own ways.

Once you’ve leaned out into the future and created your Painted Picture, reverse engineer to make it happen. A good example of how this works is the custom home construction process. In this specific scenario, the finished product—the home—is the equivalent of our Painted Picture.  But before creating it, home builders meet with clients and ask them to describe all kinds of areas of the home they want built or renovated. They get photos from clients and draft sketches based on these photos and other materials. After a few discussions to determine precisely what the clients want, the desired home begins to take shape visually. The plans, the builder and architect then draw up show a clear, painted picture of what the home should look like.

Using the plans as a guide, construction workers, electricians, plumbers and other team members build the client’s dream home, or ‘reverse engineer’ it. Custom home construction is the perfect example of reverse engineering in action: by starting with what the home should look like, all of the players on the team, from construction workers to the folks putting the paint on the walls, know exactly what they’re supposed to do. Everyone’s role is clear and the desired outcome is, too. It should work the same way in your organization and it can—but only if you use a Painted Picture as a guide.

I always mention to the CEOs that I coach that an organization’s Painted Picture should serve the same purpose for you and your employees as the plans for a custom home: it should show you the way forward in reaching your ultimate objectives for your organization.

Don’t forget: Draft your Painted Picture with care, attention, and detail. This way, everyone on your team understands his or her role.

Years after working with an Olympic coach, I realized that the process of visualization was a lot like building a dream home.  If you can visualize what the dream house–or your designer kitchen–looks like, then you can talk to an architect and explain the vision you have in your mind.  You can even tear photos out of magazines to help explain what you see in your mind.  Once the architect can ‘see’ the same vision as you, he or she can create the blueprints for your dream home.

When you have a blueprint for success, you are more likely to achieve your desired goal, whether it’s building a house, winning a sports competition, or growing a business. That’s why as a business coach and mentor, I believe that it’s essential that you communicate what your business is going to look like at every stage of its growth, but most importantly, what it’s going to look like in three years. I like this timetable because people will have a better idea of how to incorporate over-arching goals into their day to day work, since it doesn’t seem as far away, but isn’t in the same category as other daily tasks.

Just so we’re crystal clear: This blueprint or ‘Painted Picture’ isn’t a to-do list, a five-year plan, or a vision statement.  Vision statements are when everyone gets in a room and you pull together the words that best describe your business, and you create a one sentence vision or mission statement for your company that no-one reads and no-one cares about ever again.  This is different. This is when an entrepreneur, CEO or whatever you are plants one foot in the present, and then dips the other into the future, into what ‘could be.’

When you peer into the future, what do you see? What do you want to be there? What materializes in front of you as the epitome of success? Don’t worry about how you’re going to build it, just focus on describing what you see over the next three years. One exercise that can be helpful is to imagine you’re filming every aspect of your business: your employees, customers, supplier relationships and so on. Once you’ve completed this exercise in its entirety, you’ve created a ‘Painted Picture.’  Scroll down here to read the Painted Picture.  This is where I start my CEO Coaching of all the Entrepreneurs I mentor.

Have you ever observed an athlete right before a competition? The next time you watch the Olympics take a look at the high jumpers.  You’ll see many of them standing very still just before they start running to the bar.  Then they’ll close their eyes and you’ll see their head bobbing up and down as they imagine running up to the bar—but they haven’t even moved.  Sometimes they even throw their head backwards a bit as they jump over the bar in their mind.  Then they open their eyes, stare at the bar intently, and begin to recreate in real time what they just visualized.  Downhill skiers do this too–they’ll use their gloved hand to pretend to ski the entire course (some imagine it quite realistically in their minds, and you’ll see them respond physically to imagined obstacles on the hill). Whatever the sport, these athletes are using visualization to achieve their desired results, and by imagining the obstacles they might face, they prepare themselves mentally and physically for the challenge.

The visualization techniques used by athletes should also be applied to business. I’ve had enormous success with the process after learning about it from an Olympic coach and sports psychologist. This coach worked with high performance athletes to help them visualize their task prior to the event taking place.  He showed us a variety of examples of where athletes using a process of visualization would so strongly ingrain the success and actual performance of the event into their mind, that when they competed, they simply recreated the vision they’d burned into their memory bank.  They could, in fact, ‘see themselves’ competing, and as a result, their vision of success became a reality. This has been core to my mentoring and coaching CEOs.