As sports fans know, Kobe Bryant is considered one of the greatest basketball players in the history of the game. He won five NBA championships, was named an All-Star 18-times, was the 2008 NBA most valuable player, was a two-time Olympic gold medalist, and still holds the designation of being leading scorer in the history of the Los Angeles Lakers franchise. He retired in 2016, after 20 years in the NBA. In January of 2020, Bryant and his daughter Gianna or “Gigi” as well as seven others passed away tragically in a helicopter crash.
On the eve of his retirement, Kobe penned a farewell poem titled “Dear Basketball,” which was published in The Players’ Tribune and later made into an Oscar-winning short animated film of the same title. It is a moving tribute to his career—the six-year-old boy rolling his dad’s socks into a ball, shooting them into the laundry basket with five seconds left on the clock. “I never saw the end of the tunnel,” wrote Kobe. “I only saw myself/Running out of one.” Basketball was Kobe’s dream, the thing that flowed through his veins and gave him his identity and purpose. He never doubted that it would be his future. And he famously worked hard, on and off the court, for decades, to make his dream a reality.
Kobe’s life tells us a lot about “vision”—the ultimate dream, your family’s biggest goal, where you want you and your family to go.
Like the process of identifying your family’s values, creating your family’s vision will take introspection. Helpful here is business writer Jim Collins’s analogy of “The Hedgehog Concept.” The name comes from an ancient Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” “A Hedgehog Concept,” says Collins, “is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at.” The process of honing in on your family’s “one big thing” means that your family has to think together about what it is you are collectively good at, what you feel destined to do together. You may very well do a lot of things really well, but chances are, there is something you are uniquely positioned to offer to the world.
For many families, the vision may be in part shaped by the parent(s)’ career choices.
In Kobe’s family, athletics were highly valued. His father had been in the NBA, his daughter Gigi dreamed of the WNBA. (Kobe famously and proudly told ESPN’s Elle Duncan that he was a “Girl Dad,” proud of being a father to daughters, and that Gigi was “a monster, a beast” on the court, better than he was at that age.) The Bryants were uniquely positioned to excel athletically—and they did, and gave a lot back to the world because they embraced those gifts. Oftentimes, talents or interests “run in the family,” and this is OK. That doesn’t mean you ignore the child who has a different gift—Kobe’s oldest daughter was a volleyball player, and he supported her, too. But it does mean that part of forging your family’s identity is to understand what your family’s gifts are, and to embrace them.
Your vision probably won’t change much, but it may adapt or require a new strategy.
Collins also teaches that an organization’s ability to self-renew is the best defense against irrelevance. He highlights that 85% of the original Fortune 500 companies are no longer on the list. Why? They couldn’t switch gears when they needed to. Think about Apple—they started with the computer, but today the heart of their business is the iPhone. Or, again, remember Kobe. He recognized that his body was not going to last forever, he retired, and he committed himself even more to being a “Girl Dad” and fostering his children’s abilities. Notably, he died on the way to a youth basketball event with Gigi. His family’s vision of athletic excellence was still there, but instead of being focused on Kobe’s career, it now focused on his children’s futures.
Your family vision is the thing that’s going to focus all of your goals.
And it’s the thing that will remain constant, although it may look slightly different from time to time. “When you make a choice and say, ‘Come hell or high water, I am going to be this,’” Kobe said once, “then you should not be surprised when you are that. It should not be something that is intoxicating or out of character because you have seen this moment for so long that . . . when that moment comes, of course it is here because it has been here the whole time, because it has been [in your mind] the whole time.”
The vision is that thing—the thing that drives you, that focuses your abilities and plans, and is somehow there the whole time.
