F3 The word “visionary” gets attached to a rare few, the Martin Luther Kings, the founders who saw something nobody else could. F3’s field manual says that image scares ordinary men away from leading, and that it is mostly a misunderstanding.
What does F3 mean by vision?
Something more basic than genius. F3 defines vision simply as the ability to see an advantage and the steps required to reach it: to picture a better situation than the current one, plus a rough idea of the path that gets there. It calls this the first of the four skills of leading. Notice how ordinary that is. It is not mystical foresight. It is the plain act of looking at how things are and seeing how they could be better. Put that plainly, and the fear that vision belongs only to geniuses starts to look misplaced.
Do you have to be a genius to have vision?
No, and F3 is emphatic about it. Calling someone a “visionary leader,” it jokes, is like calling water “wet water,” because every real leader visualizes; a man who cannot picture a way forward is not leading in the first place. Yes, some men see bigger and further than others. But you can be a genuine leader without the world-changing vision of a great historical figure. Your vision is your own, and F3 says it does not have to come from blinding inspiration. It can be nothing more than seeing how to build a slightly better mousetrap. Which raises a fair question about whether that small kind of vision is worth anything.
Why does small vision still count?
Because that is how most real change actually happens. F3 points out that history has a few great leaps, but the vast majority of progress is built out of small, incremental improvements, one modest better-than-before after another. A man who sees one thing that could be a little better, and leads people toward it, is doing exactly what a leader does. You do not need a mountaintop vision to lead. You need to see the next better step, and be willing to move toward it.
F3 calls this Vision, part of leading right in the F3 Nation Q-Source, the field manual for virtuous leadership that F3 is built on. Read the full teaching: f3nation.com/vision. F3 Denver is where men practice it. Find a workout.