My strongest area is vision. It's the most important competency. It means that my life motivation is to create new projects in different fields. It's very like architectural projection. Architect has to design buildings and preview every detail before the construction launch.
2. How does it work?
It's obvious that I reason by images. These images assemble the picture I can clearly communicate. One can divide the picture of future project into pieces. Let's take a stadium. To build it I would need a running-track, a roof, a grass-plot etc. Dealing with one of the pieces I can understand that I want the grass to be green the whole year. So it should be warming. Thus I can make up the whole picture.
3. Do you design only the perfect picture?
I can see weak pieces that I don't like. It mainly refers to the pictures of real projects. So I replace them by new ones, I change pieces and look at the picture again.
4. What is your next step?
I communicate the picture to other people. According to my experience clear description of the picture can strongly motivate people. For example if you ask them to imagine that on the next day there would be a lake, trees, clouds on the precise places, people would feel new reality. And it does motivate them.
5. Why should people believe in your ideas?
The key point is that you ought to be sure what are you saying is true. When I make up a picture I'm sure that it's almost perfect and that it's worth being dealt with by other people. I see the moment of communication as the transmission of my dream.
6. How people enter this reality?
In a short period a critical mass of adopters of the idea appears. People begin to consider the picture as their own. They work on it and try to materialize it. And the moment comes when the whole system begins to work. It has its ideology, its leaders who have their own vision. In fact it's virtual reality materialization.
7. How did you start 36'6 drugstore company?
When a group of managers worked on the project I was intensively communicating my vision.
It was based on the perfect picture of Boots. Nobody of them was familiar with real Boots. It became a great virtual starting point. When some managers went to England and saw the real Boots they became disappointed. It was far from our perfect vision.
8. What is needed for the materialization?
For me passion is highly important. It's something you are really worried about. You want to transmit this passion to people. And you always feel if something is wrong. When I see any problem in my company I feel as if I had toothache. Passion allows you to recognize every little gap between your picture and reality.
