You know the journey ahead is a long one, but where do you start, when perhaps the destination is not completely clear yet?

Everyone (including myself), as well as any business books on strategy, will tell you that you need to figure out the mission first. What is the vision, values, BHAG? Then work backwards from there, to what your 3HAG is; what does it mean for the next year and the next quarter. How do you make sure what you are doing short term takes you to the ultimate destination?

Now, what if the vision is not completely clear yet. You still have a business to run. All essential planning takes time, you may not know the market too well yet, nor have the right crew to sail all the way. What then?

We often see this at the beginning of coaching relationships, especially with early stage companies. The clarity, skills and discipline are still developing. They still have the business to run.

Peter Oxley at one of our recent roundtable meetings used the analogy of “trip from LA to NY.” You may not have planned every step of the journey. Imagine you haven’t done a long road trip like that before. You may not know how fast you’ll be able to drive. You may not have time to plan the most optimal route yet, but you have to get on the road TODAY. So, what do you do? You know it’s roughly somewhere East, so you take your best guess on how far you can make it today and you book your first hotel stay there.

Then, while driving, you figure out how much you can rely on your travel buddy to take the wheel. You learn to anticipate how quickly you get tired. Over the lunch break you look at the map (yeah, the analogy here is failing a bit once you bring Google Maps into the equation, but bear with me). You make a better plan along the way. In the evening at the hotel you sketch out the next day, and you plan it better, because you learned something new. You have more data.

You may even learn that your first day was not ideal, and you could’ve done better. Gone further. Along a better road. But it doesn’t matter. You’re better off than when you started, and you’re on your way.

So, don’t stress about the first step. Dive in. Don’t give in to analysis paralysis.

What is the first step on your journey? Write it down and get on with it!

Bon Voyage!