Importance of the Mission and Vision Statements
It is important for a consultant to keep the client’s mission and vision in mind when developing a strategy for a client to achieve an objective. This is true whether the objective is to develop a market, increase sales, or develop operational efficiencies. If the mission and vision are not considered, it is quite possible that the approach to reaching the client’s objective would be detrimental to the long-term success of the client’s organization.
Mission
Organizations exist to fill some need. This need can help a consultant understand how the organization views its mission. For Coca Cola, their universe is all of the people in the world and one unifying theme is that all people seek happiness and optimism.
Coca Cola’s mission is to bring happiness and optimism to the world.
Vision
How will the organization create value by fulfilling its mission? Remember the organization cannot exist for the long term if it doesn’t create value. Coca Cola has chosen to create value by:
Offering beverages, creating partnerships with bottlers, being a great place to work and providing increasing financial value for its shareholders.
Implications for Consultants—All organizations do not have formal mission and vision statements. When asked, an executive of an organization might give as the mission “to increase profits 10 percent per year.” This clearly is neither, a mission or a vision, but an operational goal.
If an organization does not have a clearly stated mission and vision, the consultant may have to develop an operating mission and vision for the consulting project. A consultant would begin by creating a list of questions to be answered. Some can be answered through observation and secondary research. Questions that might be asked include:
- What is the industry?
- What value is created for customers?
- Is the primary product or service a commodity?
- Do competitors have similar offerings?
- Why do customers choose this organization?
- Does the organization believe a specific product or service is the driver of value?
- Does the organization believe the customer defines the value provided?
- Is the organization defined by the industry, the market or by financial returns?
Answers to these questions can help determine an organization’s mission and vision. While there isn’t a specific mission and vision statement, understanding why customers buy from an organization will reveal something about what customers find of value. Preserving this value while developing recommendations for a client’s organization should be a guiding principle for a consultant.
Consider the example of an individual with a pressure washer and limited funds wishing to enter into the maintenance business and grow to be a major player in home and commercial maintenance.
This individual might create a mission statement as follows: (1) To make available quality exterior maintenance service to home and business clients throughout the state of Texas and (2) create value and make a difference.
The vision statement might be as follows: (1) Using internal cash flows to develop an organization that provides exceptional quality service at reasonable rates; (2) create a network of technology and industrial partners to provide innovative and effective solutions for exterior building maintenance; (3) develop an organization that is highly effective, lean; and fast moving; and (4) maximize financial returns.
This vision and mission statement would help determine how the components of marketing would fit together to develop a marketing strategy. Since it is known that it is to be a self-financed operation and that the only service now available is pressure washing, identifying the market that can be served now is important. The potential customers are those that need pressure washing but can’t afford or don’t want the services of well-established exterior maintenance companies.
After some consideration a strategy statement might be developed. In this case the marketing strategy statement might be: To market convenient, low-price pressure washing service to individual homes and small business owners while adding services and markets as cash flow allows.
Here attention will be focused on promotion to efficiently let potential customers know of the service available. Location will also be important in that the service should be offered only in areas that can be served with existing personnel and equipment.
It is with the vision- and mission-driven strategy that the Planning, Organizing, Directing, and Controlling components of management can be employed. At this point strategy directs the development of the tactics that are in alignment with the vision and mission.
Planning would start with available resources and describe the process to grow from a single pressure washer driven organization to a statewide organization providing services to a large base of customers. The plan would describe the growth rate based on reasonable customer base growth and new services to be offered. The planning would consider the type of work force to deliver the service (brokered, through other providers, independent contractors, employees, etc.).
The plan would describe the internal cash flows and the amount of cash to be used to maintain and grow the business. It would also describe approaches to increase cash flows, incur debt, or invite equity partners into the business.
The plan would also describe the types of equipment needed, when it would be needed and if it should be leased or purchased. Finally, the planning process would identify the methods by which the company would be managed from sales approaches to accounting procedures and from quality control to credit management and job logistics.
After the plan is developed and compared with the vision, mission, and strategy, the business can set the organizational structure, understand how to direct activities, and create reports that allow management to gauge how closely actual results measure against planned goals.
This is a simple example but shows the importance of understanding what an organization wishes to do (vision/mission and strategy) before developing tactics.
Consider what might happen if mission and vision aren’t the guiding force of strategy and tactics. Suppose a young entrepreneur faced with the need to create revenues for off-season business cycles decides to provide lawn maintenance services to supplement a holiday lighting business. The entrepreneur has a long-term goal of growing the holiday lighting business into a business that provides lighting for major events.
While it is a reasonable approach, the seasonal business of lawn maintenance would not move his company toward the ultimate goal he had set for the business. A consultant advised that using an approach of filling available work time with work that didn’t support the long-term goals of the business could change the focus and perhaps prevent the attainment of the long-term goal.
Young entrepreneurs aren’t the only people facing this dilemma. Seasoned CEOs find themselves faced with challenges and responding to market changes and competitors in ways that are not in keeping with the organization’s mission and vision. These CEOs are usually driven by short-term profit requirements, analyst’s expectations and the need to grow. These CEOs often embark on diversification as a strategy and use acquisitions to achieve growth goals. If acquisitions do not consider the mission and vision, the result can be an organization that can’t reach expectations due to a lack of business focus.
It can be difficult to always go back to check to see if the latest tactics being implemented to address a business challenge support the firm’s mission and vision. It is more difficult to require that mid-level managers spread across many operating units only implement tactical solutions that are in keeping with the firm’s overall mission- and vision-driven strategy.
However, not insuring implemented tactics are in alignment with a mission- and vision-driven strategy is the surest way for an organization to find itself in an unintended business, producing value for unintended markets. This can spell financial ruin in the worst case and in the best of cases it will require a change in the mission and vision statement and direction of the business.
Conclusion
Understanding a client organization’s mission and vision are critical to developing a consulting project that will recommend strategies in keeping with the organization’s goals. Many organizations do not have written mission and vision statements and a consultant may have to infer the mission and vision through conversations with leaders and observation of actions taken by an organization’s leaders.