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March 24, 2004
"Once we were standing still in time
Chasing the fantasies that filled our minds
You knew how I love you but my spirit was free
Laughing at the questions that you once asked of me
Do you know where you're going to?
Do you like the things that life is showing you?
Where are you going to, do you know?"
--from the theme from "Mahogany" by M. Masser, G. Goffin
With Tinkerbell pointing the way and Peter Pan setting the
course, the way to Neverland is clear: "Second star to the
right, and straight on till morning." But at some point we
all grow up, and that means taking a leap from the world
of fantasy into one of reality, where knowing where you are
going can be a bit more difficult. Does your business know
what direction it is going with clarity, or does it seem that
each day you come to work you are simply chasing whatever
fantasies come into the minds of the powers that be? Alas,
in so very many businesses it is more a case of the latter
than the former.
Those companies that do have a clear sense of where they are
headed are nearly always driven by leaders who are able to
motivate their teams to move in the desired direction with a
sense of urgency. In addition to strong leadership, the best
way to assure that a shared commitment exists throughout an
organization is by articulating, documenting, and then
strategically using clear statements of corporate mission,
values, and vision for the future. This article will provide
a brief overview on how companies can go about developing
these tools for their business.
Let's first define the scope of each of these items:
- The mission statement describes the fundamental objectives of
the business.
- The mission statement is often augmented with an associated
set of values and guiding principles. These values provide
behavioral objectives that describe how the organization
intends to act as it engages in its core business, and they
create a cultural contract between the organization and its
constituents.
- The vision statement motivates, challenges and compels an
organization and its staff towards a preferred and achievable
future.
Developing and using clear communications that address each
of these areas is what is critical--it is not terribly important
what labels are used for the statements, or if the content is
explicitly broken out into three separate statements or combined
into fewer communications.
How can an organization develop a good mission statement and set
of values that can really help guide its growth? In the 1950's a
professor at St. Louis University named Walter Gast identified
six laws that a business should satisfy in order to be successful,
and in their book "The Mission Primer" Richard and David
O'Halloran have taken those laws and incorporated them into a
methodology for developing good mission statements.
Key to Professor Gast's laws is that in order for an organization
to perform profitably in our society in the long run, it must have
a mission to do more than just make money--it must fulfill a
variety of other obligations that _enable_ it to make money.
Specifically, successful organizations must do these six things:
- Produce a want-satisfying commodity or service, and continually
improve its ability to meet needs.
- Increase the wealth or quality of life of society through the
economic use of labor and capital.
- Provide opportunities for the productive employment of people.
- Provide opportunities for the satisfaction of normal occupational
desires.
- Provide just wages for labor.
- Provide a just return on capital.
When many organizations draft their mission statement they focus
entirely on laws 1 and 6. But Gast claimed (and there is evidence
to support) that organizations that articulate a mission and
values embracing all six laws will tend to be more successful
than those that don't. In their book, the O'Halloran's develop a
process for using Gast's laws to construct a set of objectives for
an organization, and then using the objectives to construct a
mission statement and a set of values.
With so many possible options that a business can choose from
in adopting its values, how does an organization decide which
ones are the most important to focus upon? In their book
"Organizational Vision, Values and Mission," Cynthia Scott,
Dennis Jaffe, and Glenn Tobe describe a "game" that can be played
using "Value Cards" that allows an organization to consider and
prioritize a wide spectrum of values that might be incorporated.
Values are also divided into six "clusters" that assist in their
categorization:
- Social Responsibility values represent ideals that we
experience as being good in themselves. These values relate
to things like fairness, honesty, tolerance, courageousness,
integrity, forgiveness, peacefulness, and environmentalism.
- Mastery values focus on achievement in the external world.
These values relate to advancement, intellectual status,
recognition, authority, power, competition, achievement, and
competence.
- Self Development values represent the search for personal
challenge, creativity and self-development. These values
relate to challenge, self-acceptance, finding inner harmony,
knowledge seeking, adventure, creativity, personal growth,
and spiritual growth.
- Relationship values represent the development of personal
relationships, helping and working with other people, feeling
part of a group or team and sharing experience. These values
relate to belonging, diplomacy, teamwork, helping,
communication, friendship, consensus, respect and
consideration.
- Continuity values focus on maintaining stability and enduring
qualities. These values relate to tradition, security,
stability, neatness, self-control, perseverance, and
rationality.
- Lifestyle values relate to the ways that people work and live,
personal appearance and the way that a person approaches the
world. These values relate to health, pleasure, play,
prosperity, family, appearance, intimacy, aesthetics, and
community.
Once a mission statement is articulated, designing a vision
statement allows an organization to focus on what it plans to
create and where it wants to go in the future. The vision
statement provides a motivating force for the organization, even
in hard times, and it gives people a better understanding of how
their individual roles contribute to where the organization is
moving as a whole. A vision statement might incorporate
objectives over a specific multi-year time frame (5, 10, or 20
years out, for example), which would not be appropriate in
either a mission statement or a quarterly plan.
A vision should motivate and challenge the team to meet objectives
that are realistic but yet difficult to achieve. A vision statement
might provide insight into how the organization plans to
differentiate itself and measure its progress along the way, and
how it will recognize that it has accomplished its objectives when
it achieves them. Because each day that passes is a step into the
future, the vision statement will need to be revisited and updated
more frequently than the mission statement and values.
In creating these corporate statements for your organization, it
can help immensely to look at examples, both good and bad, from
other organizations. The references below this article provide
links to hundreds of corporate statements in diverse industries,
along with discussion on how various organizations actually use
the statements when they are created.
And don't hesitate to let us know if ADASTRO can be of further
assistance, whether it be to provide guidance in helping you
craft your company's mission, values, and vision statements,
or in designing other strategies that will shape a more profitable
future for your organization. After all, that's a key part of our
mission!
Additional Reading:
Organizational Vision, Values and Mission: Building the
Organization of Tomorrow by Cynthia Scott, Dennis Jaffe,
and Glenn Tobe (1993) ISBN 1-56052-210-0
The Mission Primer: Four Steps to an Effective Mission
Statement by Richard and David O'Hallaron (2000)
ISBN 0-9676635-0-4
Corporate Statements: The Official Missions, Goals,
Principles and Philosophies of Over 900 Companies
by Paul G. Haschak (1998) ISBN 0-7864-0342-X
The Mission Statement Book: 301 Corporate Mission
Statements From America's Top Companies by
Jeffrey Abraham (1999) ISBN 1-58008-132-0
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