How far you can see = How far you can get
How much do your employees relate to the vision and the strategy of your organisation? If I stop them in the hallway, do you think they will be able to share what your company mission is and how they contribute to its success? If the answer is “No” or “I am not too sure”, keep reading.
I don`t know about you but for me, as a purpose driven individual, it is essential when joining a new organisation to check the purpose, vision and mission of that organisation and find as much information before I make my decision and sign the new contract.
A transparent and clear communication on the company mission, vision and strategy will result in:
Attracting the best talent
Motivating your employees to fully engage in what they do and give their absolute best for the company success
If you are a new business, make sure you have the basics right and spend some great time with your Leadership Team and ideally some members of staff to collaboratively come up with a company mission, long-term vision and align your short and medium term strategy to them. You can use various methods to do that and preferably a neutral facilitator for this activity. Some of the ways I used which gave wonderful results are vision canvas, postcard from the future, vision board, cover story vision. Things to consider as well are your customer, of course, any internal and external forces, the context.
I would like to re-iterate on the importance of doing this in collaboration. Select carefully your team for this exercise. Obviously, you can not involve absolutely every member in your organisation and if you do, imagine how long and difficult this might be. Consider different roles and representatives of different teams. Use those people throughout the process to connect to the different levels of the organisation and get feedback from them as well. You can only benefit from everyone`s perspective and decide as a Leadership Team how/ if you would like to take it into consideration.
Once you have a company mission statement, long-term vision and aligned short and medium term strategy, don`t let all this effort be in vain. Communicate and communicate regularly. Market it to your external customers and your employees as if they are also your customers. Include it in the on-boarding process of your new employees. Make it visible and relate it day in and day out to what people do.
What if you are not a new company and you already have a mission statement, a product vision and a strategy but it is very much just something on the website and you find it difficult to engage people to passionately talk about.
Well, in this case, consider almost starting from scratch. Almost as, of course, you may want to leave some core parts from your mission statement and vision. At the same time, if they are no longer relevant for your customers, nor for your employees, pivot, change, dream again, be bold! Ask yourself:
What is the difference your company would like to make in this world?
How do your products and services contribute to that mission?
What do you need to do short and medium term that will help you realise the vision long term?
Think out of the box! If you don`t, someone else will…
More details on how you are able to successfully execute your strategy will follow in the next few days. Stay tuned.
Be a visionary, look beyond, the sky is not your limit!
