Vision and Mission Statements are a waste of time! Or are they ….

Recently, vision and mission statements have become so watered down in the corporate world that they are basically meaningless. If your company’s mission statement is anything like “we will constantly exceed our customer’s expectations”, having your business development team arrive at a sales call with a marching band will probably “exceed customer expectations”, but not necessarily increase sales, or assist your business achieve its goals. Because of this, vision and mission have been largely painted with negative connotations. When used properly though, vision and mission statements can be very powerful tools, especially for developing firms. Just as a sports coach has a vision for putting a dream team together and plans for winning games, vision and mission provide direction for a business, without which it is difficult to develop a workable plan. A workable plan allows the business to engage in activities that lead the organization forward and avoid allocating resources to activities that do not.

Vision Statements

Vision statements and mission statements are different. A vision statement spells out goals at a high level and should line up with the owner's goals for the business. The vision should state what the owner ultimately wants the business to be, in terms of growth, values, staff, contributions to society, and so on; therefore, self-reflection by the owner is a vital activity if a meaningful vision is to be crafted. Once the owner(s) have defined the vision, you can begin to develop strategies for moving the organization towards that vision, and part of this process would include the development of the company mission statement(s).

Mission Statements

The mission statement should be a concise statement of business strategy, developed from the customer's perspective and it should fit with the vision for the business. The mission should answer three seemingly simple questions:

1.    What do we do?

2.    How do we do it?

3.    For whom do we do it?

1.What do we do? 

This question should not be answered in terms of what is physically delivered to customers, but by the real and/or psychological needs that are fulfilled when customers buy your products or services. Customers make purchase decisions for many reasons, including economical, logistical, and emotional factors. An excellent illustration of this is a business that imports hand-made jewellery from East Africa. When asked what her business does, the owner replied, "We import and market East African jewellery." But when asked why customers buy her jewellery, she explained that, "They're buying the story behind where the jewellery came from." This is an important distinction and answering this question from the need-fulfilled perspective will help you answer the other two questions effectively.

2. How do we do it? This question captures the more technical elements of the business. Your answer should encompass the physical product or service and how it is sold and delivered to customers, and it should fit with the need that the customer fulfils with its purchase. In the example above, the business owner had originally defined her business as selling East African jewellery and was attempting to sell it on shelves of boutique retail stores with little success. After modifying the answer to the first question, she realized that she needed to deliver the story to her customers along with the product. She began organizing wine parties that included a slide show of East Africa, stories of personal experiences there, and pictures and descriptions of the villagers who make the jewellery. This method of delivery has been very successful for her business.

3. For whom do we do it? The answer to this question is also vital, as it will help you focus your marketing efforts. Though many small business owners would like to believe otherwise, not everyone is a potential customer, as customers will almost always have both demographic and geographic limitations. When starting out, it is generally a good idea to define the demographic characteristics (age, income, etc.) of customers who are likely to buy and then define a geographic area in which your business can gain a presence. As you grow, you can add new customer groups and expand your geographic focus.

An additional consideration with mission statements is that most businesses will have multiple customer groups that purchase for different reasons. In these cases, one mission statement can be written to answer each of the three questions for each customer group or multiple mission statements can be developed.

As a final thought, remember that your vision and mission statements are meant to help guide the business, not to lock you into a particular direction. As your company grows and as the competitive environment changes, your mission may require change to include additional or different needs fulfilled, delivery systems, or customer groups. With this in mind, your vision and mission should be revisited periodically to determine whether modifications are desirable.

Version 8 would love to help you develop a clear vision and mission statement for your business or team. Leave us a comment below, or head on over to www.version8.com.au and fill in the Contact Form, and we will get back to you ASAP.

I think I just invented a word! “VISION-A-LISATION”

In my last post on this subject, I made the following two statements –

“vision and mission statements have become so watered down in the corporate world that they are basically meaningless”

and

“vision and mission provide direction for a business, without which it is difficult to develop a workable plan”,

and then dug quite deeply into the mission statement side of the equation, which was putting the cart slightly ahead of the horse! So, in this post I’d like to take a closer look at the vision statement, without which the effective mission statement is almost impossible to develop.

The company leaders or directors usually develop the classic vision statement at the annual leadership retreat, because "it is the right thing to do" and it formed part of the CEO's recently acquired MBA. The whiteboard is cleaned, the water jugs are refilled, and everybody in the room is expected to contribute "visionary" words that are applicable to the company. Once the creative momentum expires, everybody votes on the words that they believe are the most applicable, and then those are shoehorned into a sentence that has everybody nodding furiously once it is complete. Two weeks later, nobody can remember the entire sentence, and after six weeks in the real world of business, most of the people who created the sentence have forgotten that they were even part of the process!

This kind of vision statement will never work, primarily because it is not founded in reality. And for most of us in business today, spending time on things that don't work, is a luxury we cannot afford, and just plain dumb. So let's deconstruct the process and see if we can save any of the pieces.

Getting out of your office is a great idea, so let's keep the company retreat or something similar. You need to create an environment that is free of interruptions and the limitations of everyday activities. Going "retro" or "old school" and turning off laptops, tablets, and associated tech so that you can revert to pen and paper will also help to marshal your thoughts. Now you need to answer one seemingly simple question – where do you want your business to be (three) years from today? Depending on the current state of your business you may want to adjust the time period, but keep the focus on "where". The mission statement exercise will take care of the “what”, "how" and "for whom" questions, so make sure you don't get bogged down in those at this point of the exercise. Allow yourself to jot down random thoughts that you can structure more coherently later, and if you are comfortable with the process, this is the perfect environment in which to do some mind mapping.

Now, for those of you who are starting to smell incense, and hear finger cymbals and gongs, relax! All we are trying to do is to vision -a- lise (visualise) the future, and we will turn that into a very focused and practical exercise in just a second. For now I want to draw your attention to your favourite sporting code, and the top performers in that arena. Top athletes use visualisation all the time, and it is clearly evident whenever a significant level of individual skill is required. Whether it is a golfer putting to win a Masters event, or the deciding penalty to win any one of the football codes, you will see the individual stand very still, often close their eyes, and then make small movements that mimic the activity they are about to perform, before opening their eyes, taking a breath, and then putting, serving, kicking, throwing, or jumping. And their subsequent activity is a mirror image of what they have just visualised.

If you are not into sport, let's talk architecture. Architects spend hours interviewing their clients to develop as specific a brief as possible, from the building owner's description of what they want the finished product to look like. In most cases, the owner of the building does not know how to build the building, but they know exactly what they want it to look like at the end of the process. The architect then uses that brief to develop a series of sketches and drawings until eventually the building owner is satisfied that he is looking at an accurate representation of what he wants - in other words his…… vision! The architect then draws the exact plans that are necessary for the building to be constructed (mission) and the builder then brings the owners vision into reality (execution).

Now let's get practical. When we answer the " where do you want your business to be (three) years from today?" question, we need to visualise ourselves running the business we want to build. As you walk around your “3 years from now” office, write down what you see; what do you hear your staff talking about? Who are your clients and what are they saying?; What do your marketing materials look, feel,  and sound like?; How is the business running day-to-day?; What are you doing on a daily basis?; Are you getting any kind of media coverage, and if so, what are they writing about?; What do your financial results look like?; I think by now you are starting to get the idea, and hopefully the finger cymbals and gongs are getting quieter, and the aroma of incense is fading.

Now you need to take the rough notes (or the mind map), and put together, in as much detail as you can, what your business will look, sound, smell, feel, and (if applicable), taste like. Your final document needs to cover every part of your business, under the headings of Human Resources, Marketing, Financial Management, Operations, and Research and Development, and as many subheadings as you need to adequately describe the picture you have developed, and the interactions between your business areas.

Now you have a document that will allow the rest of your team to develop the “what”, "how" and "for whom" questions in order to craft the Mission Statement we spoke of in the previous post. Once you have your Vision and Mission statement in place, your team is easily able to create the necessary plans to make the future come true, and that is when effective alignment happens almost automatically.

The final, and hugely important, step in this process is communicating the Vision, Mission, Purpose and Values constantly and creatively. Everybody needs to always be able to see what the future looks like, so that they can do what is necessary today to bring that into being. Leaders need to develop systems that communicate the same message constantly to employees, suppliers, and customers in such a way that culture is created.

 To go back to our earlier architectural example, when the building plans are signed off, they are handed to the builder, and his workers just follow the plan day-by-day, to make the owner’s vision come true. When the vision is clear, and the plan is practical, the future happens because everybody is literally on the same page.

Because I know that explaining the process is easier than doing it, I would love to help you develop a clear vision and mission statement for your business or team. Having an objective and experienced facilitator walk you through the process is far easier than struggling through it on your own. If you would like some help, or even just a chat on some of the pointers, leave us a comment below, or head on over to www.version8.com.au and fill in the Contact Form, and we will get back to you ASAP.