Visionarie$ Are Made Not Born

Visionaries are business superstars as rare as pop divas—and richer, too. But instead of using natural talent, they learn their craft: one that powerfully impacts segments of our lives, often in ways that we don’t even recognize. And their cunning is accessible, once defined. In Visionarie$ Are Made Not Born, retired Kellogg School of Management Professor Lloyd Shefsky illustrates the concrete steps you can take to achieve, explain and use visions to lead your business to a successful future. Shefsky lays out five elements of visions and explains how to use them in your own ventures. He uses the stories of successful business visionaries, in addition to his expert insight, to demonstrate how those elements have been effectively used in the past. The 19 business visionaries include: • Ross Perot and Ross Perot Jr., founders of EDS, Perot Systems and Jr.’s inland duty free port on his Dallas land. • Fred Smith, teen-aged crop duster who was to found Federal Express • Kay Koplovitz, who created USA network in her 20s. • Robert Walter, who founded the massive Cardinal Health on “spaghetti” thin cash. • Rocky Wirtz, rescued the limping, over-the-hill Chicago Blackhawks with a $40 million bet that struck Stanley Cup gold 3 times He gives special attention to the added complexities of family businesses, which account for over half the U.S. GDP and where family visions and business visions often collide and conflict. He explains that listening is often a key to vision, and points out that being a visionary doesn’t consist of time travel or magic. After all, vision has no presence in the future; it merely envisions the future in the present.