Green confetti fell from the Super Bowl roof of the New Orleans SuperDome as the Philadelphia Eagles celebrated and the Kansas Chiefs walked off the field with their heads down. And just like that another NFL season came to an end the way it always does, with only one team fulfilling its vision of being the champion.

Don’t you think life and business would be a lot easier to navigate if they had clearly lined boundaries like a football field and a crystal-clear definition of success?

Here’s the good news. They do.

We all get to play on our own field with our own sidelines, our own yard markers. That’s what your values are. They’re your boundaries, the things you will and won’t do as you play this game we call life. And that’s why values are so important.

Vision is where you intend to go. Values is how you get there. Brand is what others think and feel when they think about you.

You have complete control of your vision and your values. You only influence your brand.

Can you imagine how chaotic a football game would be to play or watch if it didn’t have clear sideline and endzone lines and if they weren’t the same in all 32 stadiums? Imagine if Jacksonville had squiggly lines that were 70 or so yards apart for sidelines while Green Bay had bright green dots that ran in random circles instead of a straight line for sidelines. What if Buffalo didn’t mark every 10 yards with a line and instead sprinkled blue dust wherever the field crew felt like it? And what if Denver didn’t mark the endzones with a clear, white goal line and instead just let players proclaim they had scored a touchdown whenever they felt good about themselves?

The outcome would be pure and utter chaos. You couldn’t play the game. You couldn’t watch the game. And you sure wouldn’t know who won the game.

If you run an NFL team, your vision is to win the Super Bowl, and you organize everything around trying to accomplish that. Without a clear vision, a football team is just a bunch of guys exercising. I’m a big fan of exercise, but exercise doesn’t require enormous sacrifice. It doesn’t ask you to push through pain. It doesn’t demand unselfishness. Vision does. And when you value paying the price of greatness, vision starts to become reality.

Without the lines on a field, football teams would look more like free range chickens, roaming all over the place not sure if they are making progress or if they are confusing activity with progress.

Sound familiar?

Leaders set the vision and the values. And the best teams—whether in sports or not—are made up of people who hold each other accountable to achieving the vision by adhering to the values. I can’t stress this enough.

Poor teams usually lack clear vision and values. They also tend to have leaders who don’t hold anyone accountable since no one really knows what the vision and values are.

Good teams have leaders who consistently hold everyone accountable to vision and values.

Great teams have leaders who set clear vision and values and are filled with people who hold each other accountable to both.

Are you on a poor team, a good team or a great team?

Values can be things like fairness, inclusion, profit, winning, open communication, following rules, discipline, creativity. Growth and learning a crucial values to success—whether that means taking Presentation Skills Courses or learning more effective media interview techniques. The list is endless. But the values you choose to live by, to run your career or company buy, define you the way lines define a football field.

There’s no magic number of values for a champion. Experience has taught me that the most effective people and teams have fewer values that everyone is clear on, and the least effective people and teams have dozens of values that no one can either remember or live up to.

You don’t have to be an NFL team to have metaphorical confetti fall in your life. But you do have to be clear on your vision, values, and brand. Otherwise, that thing you feel falling on your head, probably won’t be confetti.