What is your vision?
By Shai Patel
2020-09-28
In the last article we covered the ‘WHY’ of your business. For many that would have included personal values which would cover family, friends, helping others, promoting more about on that environment. For others it may be something as simple (yet challenging) as being keepers of your own time.
Having understood your ‘WHY’, this article focuses on shaping the WHY into WHAT your organisation does and HOW it does it. In business terms the VISION and MISSION respectively of your business.
For many people including CEOs of large organisations discount the importance of establishing a Vision and Mission – they are merely words on paper that may satisfy some financiers or a few customers. If this is you or your business then let’s take this opportunity to see the benefits of having a Vision and Mission, not only for yourself, but also for all those stakeholders involved and interacting with you and your business.
Just as your ‘WHY’ highlights your personal motivators, the Vision and Mission underpins your leadership and entrepreneurship potential not just your management and customer relationship potential. Whilst about leadership and management, there is a fundamental difference. Stephen Covey in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” used a jungle analogy which when paraphrased is:
The worker on the ground is busy cutting down trees and undergrowth. The manager supports the worker, keeping him on task and on track. The leader, however, is the person who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the area and works out if they are heading in the right direction. The leader points the way for the others to follow.
It is pointing the way forward, of having a Vision, that sets the way for your business and its stakeholders to understand and follow. As always, history has a way of demonstrating some dramatic examples of Vision and Mission statements. At a special joint session of Congress on 25 May 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”
Set against a backdrop of the ‘Cold War’ with Russia, the President realised that America was falling behind in the space race. Although it was carefully considered announcement, only the Panama Canal or the Manhattan Project had been comparable in size in terms of engineering complexity and potential cost. This Vision, the ‘WHAT’, was achieved on 20 July 1969 when the Apollo 11 lunar module touched down in the Sea of Tranquillity on the Moon. Incidentally, NASA’s resulting vision statement after JFK’s announcement was:
“Perform a manned lunar landing and return”
Closer to home, and more recently, Sir Alex Ferguson stated in an interview on 28 September 2002:
“My greatest challenge is not what’s happening at the moment. My greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their f**king perch. And you can print that.”
This simply was his vision, even by which at the time of the quote, Sir Alex had won the Premiership seven times, the Champions League once, European Cup Winners Cup and four FA Cups - It is important to note, the author is most definitely NOT a Manchester United supporter. The statement above brought out Sir Alex’s personal vision and one that saw him lead his club to more domestic championship wins than his closest rival Liverpool. Interesting, with the arrival of Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, his simple vision was:
“We have to change from doubters to believers. Now.”
At the time of this article, Liverpool have manged to win their first Premiership title resulting with many social media posts based on the ‘Now You Believe” theme.
The difference between a Vision and Mission
Simply, a Vision is where you aspire to be in the future. As stated earlier, imagine the Vision as the WHAT of your business. The Mission is what you aspire to do, at your best, every day – the philosophy being that if you excel at you mission, you will achieve your vision.
The Mission statement communicates the company’s core ideology and visionary goals. Referencing earlier, imagine this to be the HOW of your business – How will the business achieve its Vision. Again, by analogy, think of a treasure map. The Vision is typically where ‘X’ marks the spot, the treasure, the goal the why we are on the island in the first place. Now think of the routes on the map leading towards the ‘X’. These could be marked as footsteps – your potential journey towards your Vision.
Combined your Vision and Mission statements should be communicated. Customers who share similar values as stated in your Vision and Mission are more likely to buy in – remember the WHY discussed in the previous article. Suppliers and partners may also share some of the same values or wish to part of your aspirational journey. Employees can see the direction and goals of your organisation and be happily and productively be part of the success story.
Examples of Vision and Mission of Global Brands
Amazon:
Vision: To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
Mission: We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience.
Why it works: Amazon’s mission is cut-and-dry about what they offer to customers.
The vision takes the offerings further, saying their company will offer “anything” customers want.
Tesla:
Vision: To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.
Mission: To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
Why it works: What better word than “accelerate” in a mission to serve as the driving force behind what Tesla does. While boldly stating “best in the century” reflects loftier dreams in the vision.
Human Rights Campaign:
Vision: Equality for everyone
Mission: Working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.
Why It works: The Mission emphasises equality and reinforces the Vision statement. Everyone is emphasised to include all genders and leaves no exclusions
Save the Children:
Vision: A world in which every child attains the right to survival, protection, development, and participation.
Mission: To inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives.
Why it works: Recognition in the Mission statement of the needs of breaking through barriers globally of how children are viewed, treated, represented and respected. The vision and mission should help drive everyday decisions. For example, if you aiming to preserve the natural environment without having to unnecessarily remove or destroy natural habitat to satisfy a project you are unlikely to engage with the project and seek to work with empathetic clients