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The Curse of Management Babble (aka The Unholy Trinity of Mission, Vision and Strategy)
The primary audience for this article comprises well-intentioned, hard-working
Directors and senior executives who do not realise that they’ve undermined their
reputations and credibility by publishing vision statements and mission statements
that are neither visionary nor missionary.
It is better to have no Vision Statement than to have one that makes you look
like a numpty. It is better to have no Mission Statement than to have one which
proves that you don’t really have a mission.
Language matters. “The Ancient Mariner” works better than “The Old Sailor”.
Words create worlds. If, “Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of
the imagination” how do the words that you use strike a chord with your
audience(s)?
When it comes to vision, mission and strategy there are valuable clues in the
words themselves:
A vision can be seen. You can draw a vision – you don’t need words.
For mission think ‘missionary’. You’re out to change the world in some way.
Strategy comes from the Greek word for generalship. It’s about winning and
choices.
The cartoon refers to a common misunderstanding: many managers think strategy
is about operational excellence. It isn’t. Operational excellence is important but it’s
not strategic. It is about performing similar activities better than your rivals. In his
Harvard Business Review article, “What Is Strategy”, business guru Michael Porter
notes that strategy is about being different. Strategy is the creation of a distinctive
position involving a different set of activities. It requires trade-offs and tough
choices about what not to do.
There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer. Peter Drucker
© Alan Newman 2011 “Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
W B Yeats
In 1997 Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by James C Collins and Jerry I Porras,
was published. The year before they’d written a Harvard Business Review article, Building Your
Company’s Vision. Both were big hits and they continue to influence thousands of managers. From
their research they concluded that Great Companies (not simply good ones) transcended traditional
performance measures and were guided by core ideologies and a strong sense of purpose.
Overnight everybody began writing mission statements and vision statements – whether the
enterprise had a sense of mission or a vision or not.
Vision statements are cerebral. Think about the word itself – a vision can be drawn, imagined,
pictured, SEEN. Here are some examples where Vision is or was genuine.
Henry Ford had a Vision. A car outside
every American home.
Martin Luther King
had a Dream.
Architects can’t proceed without a clear Vision of
what will be built.
Bill Gates had a Vision of ‘one PC per desk’: at work and at home.
NASA’s Vision for Apollo. We could see man on the moon before it happened.
A new management employee was being shown around Disney’s Magic Kingdom shortly after its
opening in 1971. “What a pity Walt Disney’s not here to see it,” he said. (Disney died in 1966). “Ah,
but he did see it,” said a colleague, “that’s why it’s here.” I don’t know if this story is apocryphal or
not, but either way it illustrates VISION.
A mission is visceral. ‘Missionaries’ are out to change the world. If an enterprise really has a
mission, then without embarrassment it can say, “We are out to change the world by [ complete the
sentence ]” and both insiders and outsiders will recognise the statement as being authentic and
relevant. Here are some examples where a sense of mission is or was genuine.
At Body Shop, Anita Roddick was on a
mission to eradicate animal testing from
the world of cosmetics.
Sir Freddie Laker
was on a mission to change the world of
aviation by offering the public cheap flights.
Mahatma Ghandi was
on a mission to win Indian Independence
from the British by peaceful means.
Social engineering.*
In the 1920s Marks & Spencer said that their mission was to subvert
the English class system.
NASA’s mission (1961): “To put a man on the moon and return him
safely to the Earth by the end of the decade.”
(NASA’s Apollo Program was a rare example where Mission and Vision combined.)
* In 1924, Simon Marks of Marks & Spencer visited the US and was a keen student of Sears
Roebuck’s success. He saw how the company’s catalogue was a social as well as a commercial
phenomenon: it connected Middle America with itself and with distant cities where fashion trends
were set. After the trip Marks and his fellow directors concluded that the business of M&S was not
retailing: it was social revolution. They said that the mission of their business was “to subvert the
class structure of 19th century England by making available to the working and lower-middle classes
goods of upper-class quality at prices the working and lower-middle-class customers could afford.”
Today Wal-Mart says that its purpose is “to give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as
rich people.”
(‘The Money Thing’. Folks who’ve a habit of not thinking things through will say that the purpose of
a business is to make money. A business has to make money to stay in business – but making money
isn’t the purpose of a business. We breathe to live: we don’t live to breathe).
We noted earlier that strategy is about choices and trade-offs. Consider these two Strategy
Statements that illustrate the point: they relate to the 1991 liberation of Kuwait after the sheikhdom
had been invaded by Iraq. (We call this the TREB Test – This, Rather than this, Even if, Because.)
We’re going to do THIS: We’re going to liberate Kuwait
RATHER than this: rather than liberate Kuwait and topple Saddam Hussein
EVEN if it means: even if it means that Saddam stays in power
BECAUSE: because we abide by international law and the UN Resolution under which
we are acting is about the liberation of Kuwait only.
We’re going to do THIS: We’re going to liberate Kuwait then remove Saddam Hussein
RATHER than this: rather than liberate Kuwait only
EVEN if it means: even if it means we exceed the terms of the UN Resolution
BECAUSE: because when we have the opportunity to remove a tyrant our national
values say that we should seize it.
No matter how well a Strategy Statement might be written, it will only have power if it is authentic.
(Many companies assert that they are customer-focused but their customer-facing employees know
that it would be smarter to prioritise a meeting with their boss over a meeting with a customer).
An enterprise that emphasises Key Performance Indicators, year-on-year comparisons, targets,
quotas and EBITDA (which are all perfectly reasonable measures) will reward and promote doers
rather than thinkers; those who are task-orientated rather than people-oriented. And it is because
most organisations default to internal and operational priorities, and pay insufficient attention to
external realities and strategy, that they produce fatuous vision and mission Statements.
Most companies make do with straightforward, clear, understandable OBJECTIVES or GOALS:
Our Objective is to grow our business by 20%, year on year, for the next 5 years.
Our Objective is to be a FTSE 100 company by 2012.
Our Objective is to be Number 1 or 2 in all our chosen markets (as measured by revenue).
Our goal is to be the leader in our industry when it comes to customer engagement (as
measured by two reputable third parties).
Many corporate objectives don’t make the pulse race, or encourage employees to leap out of bed in
the morning, but there’s merit in telling people how you measure success.
Many top quality enterprises do not have a clear Vision or a sense of Mission.
That’s okay. Just don’t pretend that you do when you don’t.
Alan Newman, INV8 www.inv8.co.uk Alan’s early years were spent in Kuwait before he came to a military school in the UK for his secondary education. After graduating with a degree in Psychology from UCL, he spent 3 years in Kenya on VSO as a science teacher. He then entered the world of I.T. and worked for a number of niche software companies before joining DEC as a software services manager, where he worked in the UK and Middle East. He attended the International Advanced Management Programme at INSEAD between 1987 and 1989 and became a freelance consultant in 1992. Clients with whom he’s worked include Aviva, AXA, Hannover Life Re, Liverpool Victoria, L&G, R&SA, and Swiss Re. He has also written for FT Finance and The Journal of Brand Management.
References and Recommended Reading:
Building Your Company’s Vision, HBR 1996, Collins & Porras
Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, Collins & Porras
Competing for the Future, by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad
Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, by Michael E. Porter
Corporate Governance and Accountability, by Jill Solomon
Cultures and Organizations, by Geert Hofstede
In Search of Excellence, by Tom Peters
Key Management Ideas, by Stuart Crainer
Management and Organisational Behaviour, by Laurie Mullins
Management, by Peter Drucker
Marketing Myopia, HBR article by Theodore Levitt
Strategy as Revolution, HBR Article by Gary Hamel
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, by Clayton M. Christensen
The Theory of the Business, HBR Article by Peter Drucker
Understanding Organisations, by Charles Handy