“Only a clear definition of the mission and purpose of the organization makes possible clear and realistic business objectives.” – Peter F. Drucker
Many well-intentioned strategic planning processes go sideways because they are written from a stratospheric “Ivory Tower” perspective, complete with aspirational mission statements and esoteric values. They miss the mark because there is little thought given to how these tools can help to align the team and provide guidance for tactical on-the-ground execution of strategy.
This is unfortunate, because your business, and your team, they don’t live behind closed doors. No, they live outside of the company boardroom, with their feet on the ground delivering products and/or services to your customers in the marketplace every day. Corporate puffery and lofty statements just don’t provide much utility for the front-line team members who must make real-time decisions in today’s unpredictable and harsh VUCA environment.
There is a better way. It takes a bit of work, but for growth leaders it is well worth the effort.
In order to create an effective VUCA strategic plan it is important to clarify and nail down the mission, values, and purpose of your organization. When done well, these declarations articulate your core ideology, and become a powerful planning foundation from which you can envision a future, and then develop the appropriate objectives and a plan to get there.
The rest of this article explores the three core ideology elements that form the required foundation to build an effective and useful VUCA plan: Mission, Values, and Purpose.
Defining Your Core Ideology: Mission, Values, Purpose
Much like the hull of a ship, or the foundation for a building, your core ideology creates a strong and durable platform to align the whole organization behind your purpose, and from which you can then build an effective strategy and plan.
Many planning exercises are set up to fail from the start because the leadership teams creating them are not clear on the intention of key elements, or they should fit together. Another common challenge is a failure to write them from the perspective of helping to guide the daily activities of the organization.
Fortunately, both of these challenges are easy to address with clear definitions. Here is a quick overview of each of the three components that create your core ideology:
- Mission – A mission statement defines what your company or organization does and for whom. It should be specific enough that people understand what you do and how it may differ from your competitors, but also aspirational in that it may never be fully achieved. Ideally it will be short and easy for your team to memorize. It will provide a sense of direction to guide future decision-making and strategy formulation.
- Values – Your core values support your mission, define the culture, and should reflect how your organization will fulfill its purpose. They are the operating principles, beliefs, or philosophy of values embraced by your entire team. Be careful to focus on core values (those on which the organization will never compromise and is willing to pay a price to uphold) versus aspirational values (those that the organization espouses, but has yet to live up to in day-to-day operations). To be meaningful, values should be described in clear behavioral terms. Ideally, your values can be presented as a short and impactful list (i.e. no more than 5-7 total).
- Purpose – This concept has been popularized by Simon Sinek as “start with why” – it takes an outward focus by defining why the business exists, its larger purpose for being, in the context of your customers. In order to inspire your team to do their best work and fulfill your mission, you want to find a way to express the organization’s impact on the lives of customers, clients, students, patients – whomever you are serving. Purpose shares the benefit or benefits provided by your organization, and articulates them in the context of the customer. Great purpose statements are motivational, because they connect with the heart as well as the head by putting managers and employees in customers’ shoes and defining “this is what we’re delivering for someone else.”
Note: It is not unheard of to see organizations use mission, vision, and purpose statements interchangeably. Or, even to combine them. And that’s okay, so long as it works for you, there is no right answer. In my experience I’ve always found it is easier to have them exist separately because then the intent for each is pure, they are easier to create and share, and it is simpler to revisit one and update it. You’ll know you’ve got it right when they support and build on one another, and one doesn’t work without the other.
Future articles will explore each element in detail, including guidance on how to craft them, and some real-life examples.
The Value of Having a Solid Foundation for VUCA Planning
In order to be successful with strategic planning we need to know the core cultural elements (mission, values, purpose) that define the organization. Together, this core ideology is the foundation for effective VUCA planning, becoming the “true North” guideposts your team can use for making strategic decisions.
In a VUCA environment, where unpredictable and disruptive events can happen very quickly, we need to embrace an agile approach to making decisions in real-time. We must always balance the objective, or goal attainment, against our corporate mission, values, and purpose. If they are not in alignment, we have a problem. It is imperative that we “keep our eye on the prize” so to speak, there must be a vision for the future and knowledge of the ultimate objective(s) we are trying to achieve in order to get there.
Knowing what you’re doing and for whom (your mission), how you’re going to go about it (your values), and why you’re doing it (your purpose) are the glue that holds an organization together. Your core ideology is an essential part to building your strategic foundation and developing a strategy. You preserve these fixed elements while your vision of the future, strategies and objectives can change and flex with the market or VUCA impacts. In other words, you may modify your vision and objectives over time, but your mission, values, and purpose should remain relatively unchanged.
Conclusion
To summarize, before any strategic VUCA planning can begin we must have two foundational parts in place:
- Core ideology – defining the mission, values, and purpose of the organization. As this article shared, these elements explain why the organization exists and what it stands for. With this framework you will have complete clarity when making critical business decisions that impact the future of your organization.
- Envisioned future –a clearly defined future vision for what the organization aspires to become, and your goals. These elements explain the desired future state of the organization, and long-term goals.
With a core ideology planning elements of mission/values/vision/purpose in place, the organization now has a very helpful alignment tool, and a strong foundation from which to create effective strategy and objectives in the form of a VUCA plan. More on that next time.
-Onward