2020 the year, in 20/20 Optometry, or 20/20 in Business?
Well, here we find ourselves in 2020. In optometry, 20/20 is the term they use to express the normal visual acuity (clarity and sharpness) measured at a distance of 20 feet. Basically, it means that at a distance of 20 feet you can see objects normally.
It’s ironic then that in business generally, we want to have a combination of both long and short sight to be at the forefront and not 20/20 vision. For the entrepreneur we want to balance what is seen in optometry as a weakness, to provide both current and future gains for our businesses.
We need to be short-sighted in some ways, looking only into the near future and identifying the short-term and quick gains to provide fast influxes of turnover to our business to help in our growth. But also at the same time, we need to have a long-sighted view as well and have projects, and revenue streams that stretch into the future to allow our businesses to be stable and maintain themselves: to provide the security for ourselves and our employees to keep moving forward and building short term projects that fit into new trends (and new markets) as they arise and inevitably decline.
It’s always been amusing to me that on one side something can be perceived as a weakness, I myself am short-sighted requiring glasses or contact lenses to see “normally”, and I have friends who are far-sighted and lament having to carry around a pair of reading glasses to allow them to read a book, or to see the gauges of their car.
We view these as weaknesses, shortcomings, but in a small business, they are both strengths. I’ve often heard it said that entrepreneurs are great at building businesses and ideas, but terrible at running them. That is obviously not always the case, but in some ways, I’m sure we can all agree that for many of us the enthusiasm comes in the initial building and not so much in the day to day running and processes.
For us, the lesson is in learning how best to balance the short-term and the long-term goals, and in that, we find our twenty-twenty vision.
