I'm often asked as part of brand strategies to help with vision and mission statements and values definition. What is it with these things? Every organization seems to want them, but they put the most flimsy thought into them (despite spending hours on successive re-drafts that turn them into deadened sludge). They are usually derided by employees as meaningless fluff and only ever see the light of day on lunchroom posters, bad PowerPoint slides and desktop SWAG.
But these should be really really important, memorable, clear and motivating ideas. They should be the ideas that make the difference between coming into work everyday inspired and just showing up.
I think I've found the problem. People set about to write these things without any agreement on what the terms mean. Vision ends up being all about us, mission gets into a whole lot of "how" not "what" and values become generic ideas about respect and teamwork. If you listen to people arguing about mission statements you quickly realize that they are not actually arguing about the mission. They haven't agreed on what a mission statement is. So the process ends in a negotiated solution that everyone hates. No wonder it's relegated to SWAG.
Answer: agree on smart and simple definitions and stick to them. The rest will be so much easier. How's this:
Vision: The perfect future we want to see (that we probably cannot achieve alone).
Mission: Our role in making that vision possible.
Values: The beliefs that shape successful behavior.
And don't just use the definitions when you write the statements. Always have the definitions in place to accompany the statements wherever they are reproduced. That will eliminate all the confusion about what the heck these things are so people can focus on the meaning.
Keep it this simple and you will have ideas that inspire and provide real guidance to decision makers.
I think my favourite example of this was with a large provincial safety association whose vision was some gobbeldygook about taking a partnering role in the provision of excellent services to ...... Ya, but isn't your vision that no one dies from electical shock? Isn't it that simple? Yes. (What a relief). Can we do that alone? No. Will we ever get there? Maybe not. Is it still worth aiming for? Yes. Good, let's go with it.
With that kind of purpose behind you, everything else just writes itself.
And don't weasel out by saying that in the private sector it's all about market domination and shareholder value. If you want to motivate and orient your employees help them understand how what you do makes a positive difference in people's lives – whether you manufacture washing machines, sell mutual funds or operate an airline. How do you liberate, simplify, secure, enliven and empower the world?
It's time we dusted off this tired trio of mission, vision and values and got them meaning something again. Let's move them off the lunchroom wall and into the consciousness of every employee, manager, executive, volunteer, investor and board member.
And if the term committed to integrated solutions appears in them anywhere you need to start again.
