The Vision Driven Leader: 10 Questions to Focus Your Efforts, Energize Your Team, and Scale Your Business Hardcover – Illustrated, March 31, 2020

"The Vision Driven Leader" by Michael Hyatt explains the importance of developing a vision script for the future of your company, organization or brand. Vision script is an important distinction. This is not just a statement, but a document that lays out your vision for the near (3-5 years) future. It then takes you through the process of developing that vision script by answering 5 questions: 1) What do you want? 2) Is it clear? 3) Does it inspire? 4) Is it practical? 5) Can you sell it? You then compile that vision considering 4 categories: 1) Your team; 2) Your product; 3) Your marketing; and 4) Your impact. Once you have your vision script, Hyatt then shows you how to sell your vision, and how to develop strategies for accomplishing your vision so you can achieve the results you want. This book is a great companion to earlier works including "Your Best Year Ever," which is Michael Hyatt's book on setting personal goals. The goals you set should be derived from your vision script. As well as "Free to Focus," which is Michael's book on productivity, that explains the system for staying focused on the right tasks that move you towards your vision of your future. As with all of Michael Hyatt's books, this one is full of examples, short histories, and stories that help illustrate the point. This makes for an enjoyable and easily digestible read. “The Vision Driven Leader” is chocked full of quotable nuggets and like his other works is practical, down to earth and full of how to’s and templates to get vision out of your head and on to paper where it can be fleshed out, prioritized, and executed.

Michael Hyatt is back, and this time with practical steps to developing a vision for your life and business. He takes you through 10 questions to ask when developing your vision. Part 1, which encompasses the first two questions, focuses on the critical importance of vision. Part 2 takes us through questions 3-7 and comprises the practical heart of the book, where Hyatt teaches us to craft a vision script that is clear, inspiring, and practical. Lastly, Part 3 shows us how to overcome resistance, to "zag" in response to trouble, and a challenge to start.I was eager to read this, as I've struggled to get clarity on my vision for years. I expected chapter 3 to be my favorite since it talks explicitly about how to craft your vision script, but I was surprised by Chapters 7 and 8 being my favorites. Learning how to sell my vision and how to overcome the inevitable resistance helped me understand much of what has been tripping me up.If you're looking for a practical guide to developing and refining your personal or professional vision, then this will provide you the same straight-forward help that I've come to expect from Michael Hyatt. If you're still not convinced that vision matters, then I'd encourage you to get the book anyway (or borrow it), and read the first two chapters.P.S. There are an impressive number of references in the book. This isn't just Michael talking for 6 hours. I would guess more than 60% (conservative estimate) of the book is stories about businesses and people who had or didn't have a vision, and what happened.

I belong to generation of Gen-Xers and the culture I live in is constantly trying for my immediate attention. As a result, we feel constant anxiety and fret from one project to another without enough pausing and reflection. We often run for instant gratification and fret again to deliver instant results for the generation of millennials. While doing that the author reminds us we need not forget to provide an overarching and commonly shared inspiring and meaningful vision for all of us to align with. If you are compelled like I was, stop, pause and reflect on the meaning of all of this now. Literature that would give clear instructions in a language everybody would understand on how to create your personal or business vision for your team is scarce and often speaks to the reader the corporate language and is full of empty phrases. Not so with The Vision Driven Leader. In his book Michael Hyatt – a productivity mentor talks from his own experiences, describes the meaning and the results of a vision driven leader's attitude and the consequences of leadership with the absence of a long-term vision, he also tells a story of a thoroughly crafted vision that has been long forgotten and never came to life and how we can avoid this from happening. In order for an organization and its leaders to fulfill their mission, and especially at times of distraction and immediate threat and fear, they must direct their behavior (strategy, the How?) towards commonly shared goals set in the near 3–5 year future (the What?) and constantly remind everybody (vision leaks and you ought not to contain it) in the form of a Vision Script an inspiring, concrete and actionable but not very long document. Creating such a key and fixed document must, the author argues, always precede flexible strategies. The book instructs you on how you can create such a feasible document for yourself and for your team regardless of who you lead. The book also presents a number of inspirational life stories of people who, through their relentless vision, have contributed to improving humanity and have exceeded their perceived possibilities – a climber Tommy Caldwell (The Down Wall), Jane Chen (Embrace Warmer, Little Lotus), Malala Yousafzai (right to education), Garett Camp and Travis Kalanick (Uber), Evelyn Berezin (Word processor) and more.At first, I was skeptical, especially now in a pandemic, whether it was appropriate and realistic to even consider future visions. With this book, I realized that right now rather than thinking about securing yourself for the next day, it is more important to create a vision for yourself, your family, your co-workers, and the company you work for to get over the difficulties of the day and set our eyes on hope and what we can benefit society and our loved ones with in the long run. Read it for inspiration, it will serve you well.