A Mission Statement Is No Longer Enough
Back in the mid-80s I worked at one of the Bell operating companies wrestling with the realities of a post-divestiture existence. Over many weeks, and in countless hours of seemingly endless meetings, we worked with a team of leadership-development experts to craft the “Mission Statements” that would catapult our business into the new telecommunications age.
Awkward, cumbersome and practically indecipherable, these mission statements were created by committee and then wordsmithed to the point that almost all meaning had been extracted. The resulting vapid paragraph probably made sense to the people that created it, but drop it in front of the workers on the team and the blank stares were a silent testament to the futility of the exercise.
Fast forward to today, where the world of heirarchical, command-and-control management is rapidly giving way to a new, more exciting model of distributed, communication- and collaboration-based leadership. In this new world, it is absolutely imperative that people at all levels of the organisation understand the real vision guiding them, not just have some hackneyed cart of meaningless prose dumped on them like the mission statements of yore.
To be successful, today’s organisations need clarity — a clear vision shared by all members of the community. A guide star, if you will.
A few months ago, Carmine Gallo wrote a good article in BusinessWeek that describes the necessity of a clear vision to successful businesses. In it, he describes how “consistently delivering a simple, memorable, and concise vision can make the difference between a successful business and a failing business.”
Yves Doz, a professor at the respected business school INSEAD, agrees. In an article explaining his research, Yves points out the need for CEOs to “be able to articulate the corporate value added clearly, convincingly and compellingly enough that people start to believe in it.” Creating this shared vision and then structuring the organisation in a way that enables and rewards collaboration is key to success in the fast-paced word in which we operate.
There are a handful of attributes that a successful vision shares:
- A vision must be clear and concise enough that it is immediately and powerfully apparent
- A vision must be broad enough in scope
- A vision must call for physical as well as cultural or attitudinal changes
- A vision must include a clear picture of the role of the organisation, and it’s constituent members, in effecting the change
Offhand, I can think of a few pretty famous examples of companies losing sight of their vision and suffering spectacular falls from grace. What do you think are some important things to consider when creating and communicating a strong vision within the organisation?
Roger W. Farnsworth
Tags: Business Week, Carmine Gallo, communication, executive thought leadership, Insead, leadership, management, mission statement, Vision, Yves Doz
