What's the Difference Between a Vision and a Prediction?

In 1959, four years after Walt Disney opened Disneyland, he started looking for a new site for his next project. The Disney company would secretly refer to Walt’s latest vision as the “Florida Project.” They bought land under different LLC’s and wanted a location near major highways but with vast amounts of land for future expansion. Walt’s latest vision was grander, more challenging than Disneyland, and would model itself after the World’s Fair by adding a Community of Tomorrow, called EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). When he died in 1966, Walt’s vision was still alive, although the initial plans did not include EPCOT.

On Oct. 1, 1971, Walt Disney’s widow, Lillian, was at the opening of Walt Disney World in Orlando. After she made her remarks honoring Walt and the efforts of the Disney Corporation to make his dream a reality, someone remarked, “What a shame Walt was not alive to see his vision completed.” And Lillian said, “Oh, no. He saw it all right, he saw every little piece of it. And that’s the reason you’re seeing it here today because he saw it in his mind’s eye those many, many years ago.”

Walt had a vision, not a prediction.

Greek Philosopher Heraclitus once said: “Nothing endures but change.” Despite all the change that continually occurs before us, we listen to people who want to predict the future, even though the world is way too complicated for accuracy. For example, the weather person on television needs to make predictions, because that’s his or her job. We listen to their predictions, often sighting their foresight as our own, even though they are wrong more often than they are right. It’s human nature. We love to see the test before the exam. We love to know what tomorrow will bring, even if our hypothesis is not accurate. We believe it gives us the advantage to know something in the future. In reality, all it does is hinder our ability to think, see, and act without bias.

We think because we might know something about the future, we can then build our vision with an advantage. But our visions are never tied to predictions. We don’t realize that predictions or forecasting based on unreliable data is NEVER a vision and that a vision is not a prediction. There is an old saying that goes: “The jungle is never dangerous if you know the trails.” People who have a vision know the trails, they know what lies ahead, the pitfalls, the concerns, the risk. Meanwhile, people who base their future on a prediction enter the jungle at their own risk.

Don’t allow people to tell you about the future and why your vision is not in sync. No one knows the future and no one understands your vision. Only you control your vision, only you know the details, the path, the work required. Never allow anyone to take over your vision with a poor forecast.

Walt Disney knew the trails, and while he might not have seen the end product, he knew the ending.

P.S. If you are in search of a book recommendation, our team at The Daily Coach highly recommends Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky. Execution is a skill that must be developed by building your organizational habits and harnessing the support of your colleagues. Belsky has studied the habits of especially productive individuals and teams across industries. While many of us focus on generating and searching for great ideas, Belsky shows why it's better to develop the capacity to make ideas happen — a capacity that endures over time.

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