VISION AND MISSION: where to go and why
I am convinced it is very hard to score without a goal. I am also convinced it is very difficult to perform well and efficiently if you don’t know your vision. Or, even worse, if you have a vision but you don’t live up to it.
That is as true for the individual as for companies. How many companies, departments and individuals have a great vision and mission statement on their website, but the only thing they really want is to increase revenue? Poor vision because that doesn’t connect with peoples’ drive and motivations. With poor vision you normally achieve the opposite effect and you end up in the poor dog corner of the Boston Consulting Group Matrix13 (BCG Growth-Share Matrix), the corner where you find products with low share of a low growth market. It’s just a question of time.
A proper vision, and living up to it, are both absolutely necessary. A vision tells you what you want to become. It gives you an idea of where you want to be in the future. Once you have defined it, then it is much easier to answer what your next step is. You will know how to make it. Because you are then able to transmit it and you will also find out who will come with you on the way. Best of all, you will know when you have arrived at where you wanted to be. This is important: many people define entry strategies, but not exit strategies.
Having a vision is like having a dream: a perception, a feeling of how we would like to have things around us.
The late fashion designer Alexander McQueen (alexandermcqueen.com), for example, had the vision of a ‘lasting luxury brand to be here 150 years’. Linkedin’s Vision (Linkedin.com) is ‘to provide economic opportunity to every professional in the world’. Ashoka (ashoka.org), the organisation for social entrepreneurship, ‘envisions an Everyone A Changemaker™ world. A world that responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the freedom, confidence and society’s support to address any social problem and drive change’. At PUMA (vision.puma.com/us/en), for instance, they believe that their position as the creative leader in Sport lifestyle gives them the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to a better world. A better world in their vision — PUMA Vision — would be safer, more peaceful, and more creative. Strategy is a plan to get there. Strategy is foremost about how to use your strength to take advantage of the opportunities in an ever-changing environment. Puma breaks their vision down to programs such as safe.puma.com (focusing on environmental and social issues), peace.puma.com (supporting global peace) and creative.puma.com (supporting artists and creative organisations). A strategy should help you to be in a better position tomorrow than you are in today. Visions are growing and maturing — they are not unique acts though they should always be realistic and work in daily business.
I always suggest three approaches to define a vision. All three should be visual. The aim is to be balanced. You need to find balance between yourself, performance, relationships and sense or meaning. There are many industries which make a good living by giving support to unbalanced people. To be balanced is important, otherwise even a small crisis will have a huge negative impact. It is interesting that the ancient Greeks only gave people about fifty years old the possibility to be politicians. Why? Well, these people had already successfully survived the most important crises in their life.
