Q. Dear Ammar,
We are a hundred employee strong company and doing very well financially. I hear about how important it is to have a vision and a mission to the company and that worries me as we do not have either. Does that make us a bad company? We have tried to set a vision and mission before but we ended up with a generic statement of both that we did not feel really helped in anything. I might add that we wasted lots of time and resources trying ot come up with them.
Regards,
Concerned owner
Dear Owner,
I understand your concern. It is not comfortable for employees to be working without a clear vision and mission for the organization. It is also better for customers and suppliers to understand a company’s mission. This is why these should be published somewhere where all can see them, and more importantly understand them.
However, what you are experiencing is a pain for many organizations worldwide. Get on the internet and look at the vision and mission statements of some of the companies out there. They hardly have any attachment to their company. In other words, they are generic enough that they can fit for the next door company. This is as bad as not having a mission and vision statement in the first place.
A vision is an image of where the company wants to be in the future. it can be for indefinite time or specific, like three, five, or ten years period. A vision reflects a picture of a brighter future with the company being center stage in that picture. If one is to use examples of good vision statements, they all share some characteristics together regardless of the industry. They are clear, concise, simple, short, and specific. As if you can immediately create a mental image in your mind of what the future that the vision reflects. Some visions are so powerful that one does not even need to close eyes to see. Jack Welch gives this acid test for the strength of a vision. He says that if you wake up one of the employees in the middle of the night and ask him while still half asleep, “where are we going?” they will tell you the vision very precisely. Here are a couple of examples. At Compuware, the vision is to be: “the best worldwide provider of quality software products and services designed to increase productivity.” At Ford, it was: “'to become the world's leading consumer company for automotive products and services'.
A mission on the other hand is about what the company exists to do, for its customers. A company cannot be only about making money. I mean it can, but it would not be a successful company. I know people can give me a list of tens of companies out there that are successful but have no mission other than to make money. On the short term that can happen, but on the long term, it is impossible for a company to survive without a mission. Companies that did not have a mission twenty years ago are not in the market anymore today. Writing a mission statement, one should put the customer in mind. When we are talking about customer, this does not mean only end user, but any one who is touched by the company including shareholders, suppliers, end users, and employees. Mission statements can be or they are short but followed by further elaboration. For example, Disney had a mission of: "To make people happy." As simple as that. But they do further elaboration on how they are going to do that. 3M had a mission statement of: “To solve unsolved problems innovatively.”
When talking about vision and mission, it is more important to talk about values. Values drive the mission and vision. Every company starts from a set of core values in the mind of its creator. Then, if the founders play it right, they come up with a mission and a vision that is 100% compatible with their core values. Core values are the principles based on which one makes decisions and takes actions. Everything a person does must be based on core principles, and so do companies. For IBM, the core values of the company begin with the statement: “Dedication to every client's success...” Some companies, like General Electric do not have a mission statement per se, but focus on a list of values, which for them start with:” Imagine, solve, build and lead - four bold verbs that express what it is to be part of GE…”
Grasping the concept of a vision, mission, and core values is one thing and being able to develop them for a company is another. Many companies waste time and resources on writing statements and they end up a model for what the mission and vision should NOT be. Usually, this is caused by many factors. One of them is that some managers have not figured out a vision for the company. So, if it does not exist, trying to document it will be a futile effort. Management needs a clear vision before it can communicate it to others. same applies to the mission.
Other companies try to rely on consultants to develop their mission and vision statement. Consultants in this specific case would not get the job done either. They can help, but not lead such an effort.
Mission and vision statements, if correct, serve as a guiding beacon for the company, its employees and management, and become a motivation to everyone to help the organization reach its vision. Here is another secret of the vision: everybody who reads it will want to help you achieve it. This includes clients and the public. Everyone can relate to a company with a vision, and everybody will want them to achieve it, because people love a success story.