How to create your Vision, Mission, Values & Strategy

Have you ever been asked: "What's your mission?" How do you like an answer  "My mission is to generate profit?" I mean, a business needs, by default, to generate profit. Key account managers are measured by this profit KPI, and project leaders want to save costs. But profitability is not the overall mission for any project in business and life. Finally it is the   company’s purpose and culture  that motivates, inspires, drives our team  and helps us becoming  magnetic to our clients.

Being a business consultant, mentor and leadership coach I had the pleasure to  facililitate  strategic planning  workshops  for fortune 200 corporations  including developing the company`s vision ,  a clear mission statement ,  value statements and strategic key priorities. I remember how many nights we spent together with CEO and business owners  discussing  the meaning and  purpose of  an organizational Vision , Mission, Values and Strategy.

In this blogpost I want to share some of findings we found helpful, simplified it and used in our practical work.

What is the difference between  an organizational Vision , Mission, Values and Strategy?

This is simplified version is  a first step of an answer:

• Vision: What do I want? Where do I want to be?  BE/ HAVE
• Mission: What doe I want to do? How do i want to help others? What service do I want to provide? DO 
• Values: How do I want to behave? What is my attitude towards..? What are principles of behaviour? BELIEVE
• Strategy: What is the path? What are tools? What are the steps? What are priorities we choose? ACT

1. The Vision

What is an organizational vision?

A vision is a vividi picture of the future.

A companies vision is a picture of the companies future.

The vision is the answer to the questions:

• What do you want?
• Where do you want to be in 5 years? 10 Years?20 Years?
• Imagine how does your company look like?

A vision is a long-term goal. In some industries it is  10 years in others 3 years, Studies show  that  we cant really imagine  what is possible in 5 years .´

We think we can imagine  what is possible in 1 year and usually overestimate our goals for one year and underestimate what is possible in 5 years or more.

You would be surprised how many companies - aka management teams struggle to answer this question  especially  in a fast  changing world so many  people fall back into a victim mentality and give up on a vision and have maximum 90 day goals. 

I love 90 day goals but how do you make sure that you don´t change every 90 days the direction?

Some big projects take much longer than 90 days to accomplish. I was involved in projects : like modernisation of  railway systems, construction of hospitals,  pipelines, hotels, schools, streets, airports,  telecommunication networks, solar and geothermal energy infrastructure. I am always fascinated by  people who are developing new technologies, new medication, new treatments, developing  of new markets, winning the olympics etc. . Long term thinking is so important we want to solve environmental  issues and start projects to protect our planet, the oceans, the forests  and the animals.. But talking and dreaming is not enough you need to craft a shared vision.

What is a vision statement?

A vision statement is a short written form of the organization’s vision.

This vision statement is  communicated to the public the employees and stakeholder.

An effective vision is like a light house  with a  guiding light  for the entire company towards that vision.

It should be a clear vision that is easy to understand and to communicate to all stakeholders

How to develop a vision statement?

Sit down in silence and really ask your self :

• What do I want for my company?
• Where do I see my company in 10 -20 years?
• How will my project look like when I had over the finished project to my client?
• Imagine....

Take time to create a movie in your head. That requires CEO time in silence or project leaders time in silence. You may use morning time and write in your journal..By practicing your vision become clearer.

In our workshops we used guided visualisation techniques, meditations, vision boards and lego serious play to inspire imagination beyond what you see today and allow a kind of time travel into the future.

 Create a shared vision by sharing your dream and painting a vivi picture that others can see so that you can go together. In roundtable discussions with a flip-chart everyone writes his version of the vision statement and we facilitate a proven process so that the wording gets condensed and  is easy to understand. We use templates and prompt guiding  the leadership and project teams in this process to have fun and buy into that vision. Imagine everyone in your team is an ambassador for your big vision.

So lets imagine...

We help our clients to envision the future by using a number of powerful exercises like:

1. Envisioning the future exercise
2. Creating a Vision board exercise
3. Vision statement writing
4. Meeting the future you- time-travel exercise
5. Vision workshop -with LEGO® Serious Play® 

We alway look for new techniques that help your mind to imagine what is possible and hold space for our clients to do the work,  Finally we help  our clients to  create a shared vision  and craft a statement.

Here as some mistakes you want to avoid doing: 

Mistake number #One  You copy someone else vision statement from  their website. and done. 

Mistake number #Two The vision stays in the head of the business owner or dreamer and does not get shared with their team, friends  and stakeholders, 

Mistake number #Three: The vision is written down but nobody understands the statement. 

2. The Mission

What is a Mission?

A mission should be a powerful purpose we live for and identify with in our daily work beyond profit.

• How we serve others?
• What do we do?
• What service  we provide?
• Who do we want to help how?

What is an effective Mission Statement?

A mission statement is a purpose statement  and describes how we help and what we do.what we  promise.. 

Here are some examples for good mission statements:

We help...

Our mission is ....

• To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful
• To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
• To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. 

Our  Project Leader Academy own mission statement is:

• To empower entrepreneurs to create successful projects for business and life.
• To bring project management, sales, and leadership skills to entrepreneurs around the world and help them to become better leaders.
  This is how e help to make the world a better place.

This is how e help to make the world a better place. 

How do we create a Missions statement?

Writing  your mission statement down into sentences is hard work and takes some time.

We use a 5 step process fo developing missions statements with our clients:

1. Brain writing:

Gather what you know about your mission, what comes up what did people hear about your brand., what did you do in history, etc and collect all these sentences , words phrases  on a white board. Please do not copy others companies mission statements. Rather sit in silence and listen to yourself and your team.

2. Define your mission scope 

• Who do you help?
• What service do you provide?
• What benefit do you create?
• What value do you bring to the world?

 3. Choose Key words :

Define powerful key word representing your mission , 

4. State your  Mission 

Develop some sentences for a missions statement and agree on the most powerful one. We love to facilitate this process with individual exercises, templates, group work and moderate large community discussions with professional techniques online and offline.

5. Communicate

Share your sentence  and test your  mission statement for understanding and make sure everybody in your organization knows it.

Here is a  Mission statement template you can use

We help/empower/equip [target customer] to achieve/reach/eliminate [desire/painpoint] by providing/building/creating [tangible deliverables].

What is a slogan for a mission statement?

For marketing and communication purpose you may develop a marketing slogan - a short sentence - that represents your mission.

Nokia* =connecting people

3. The Values

What are values?

But what about our Values?

Our values help us to answer the question s:

Why do we want to go after that big vision?

Why do we want to do what  we see a our mission?

What drives our decision making on our way?

Our values  are the answer to the question:

• How will we behave?
• How do we want to behave towards that beautiful vision?
• How do we want to behave towards customers, colleagues, suppliers,  our boss, our families and friends? 

Values are beliefs or qualities that are really important to us. They help guide our actions and decisions. Different people and cultures have different values. Some common values include honesty, kindness, compassion, integrity, fairness, and respect. 

We work in our  uncover your values facilitation  process with different frameworks to help our clients understand the power of their values.

One important framework is .Graves' Spiral Dynamics  that shows how values can change as people and societies grow and develop.

Finally, there's Dilts' Neuro-Logical Levels, which looks at how values are connected to other aspects of who we are, like our identity and beliefs.

These frameworks help us understand and study values, and they show us how values shape our behavior and the way we see the world.

We all have values and live and work by values. The big question is : How aware are we about our values? Do you know what is driving your decisions and the decisions of your organization?

Values are not a set of key-words that are nice to have. Values  are the reflection of your subconscious and the your subconscious plays a significant role in shaping our beliefs, habits, and automatic responses.

With the 9 Levels values assessment we help our clients to uncover hidden values and make the values measurable. In preparation of such workshop we assess the  values of the business owner and the the CEO team . In the workshop preparation phase we create a team values or organizational values assessment that we use in our values discussion.

In our coaching and consulting session we used many years  a et of "value cards" and value exercises.

 Download your value exercise here: Click here

The Logical Levels model of Dilts  suggests that change and transformation occur more effectively when interventions are made at higher levels. In other words, if you want to create lasting change, it is often necessary to work at the levels of identity, values, and beliefs rather than just focusing on changing behaviors or the environment.

This is why we start any strategy process with defining the values.than we do the visioning exercise ,clarify our mission and once know  our position and situation appraisal we decide on the key strategies we want to apply.

Strategy

Being strategic means not throwing  spaghetti on the wall but f choosing and following a path that leads to achieving goals.

In business we will have to define  sales strategies, product strategies, growth  strategies, service strategies and so much more. But the key is to foocus s at a time s on 3-5 max to move towards your goals,

How do we apply Strategy to our business?

The Project Leader Academy has 3 key strategic initiatives as of today:( it could be that when you read this  post that our strategy will have changed)

Situation

We have been delivering successfully  a One year  Project leader Training with 25 days in presence (  workshops) to CEO and Project Leader.

We had been consulting and coaching  Presentation skills . Sales and Negotiation skills, Team building, Personal Development, Time Management, Moderating Meetings and summits and facilitated conflict resolution.

Being a serial  entrepreneur in different industries.

Developing complex infrastructure project like Hotels, Hospitals, Traffic solutions and Transport solutions.

The next step will be to set measurable goals with deadlines and to turn our dreams and gaols into  specific  projects.

We help our clients to pick winning strategies and to define projects to implement these strategies.  Here it is important to have a professional approach ton how to to define plan and execute projects to success.

Download you free project Planning blue  print that  we used in fortune 200 companies for all  different types of projects as  a guide to make our projects successful. 

Download your Project Planning  Roadmap click here