What Is The Primary Purpose Of A Mission Statement – The Importance of Vision Great business leaders create a vision, articulate a vision, have a vision with passion, and drive relentlessly to see it through. -Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric

Many skills and abilities separate effective strategic leaders like Howard Schultz from poor strategic leaders. One of them is the ability to motivate employees to work hard to improve their organization’s performance. Effective strategic leaders are able to persuade employees to adopt high ambitions and move the organization forward. In contrast, poor strategic leaders struggle to rally their people and channel their collective energy in a positive, focused direction.

What Is The Primary Purpose Of A Mission Statement

As Jack Welch’s quote suggests, one of the most important tools available to executives to motivate people in an organization is vision (Figure 2.2 “The Big Picture: Organizational Vision”). An organization’s vision describes what the organization hopes to become in the future. Well-crafted visions clearly articulate the organization’s aspirations. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful (Edwards, 2012). Google expands on its mission by listing “ten things we know,” including “focus on the user and everything else will follow,” “doing one thing really, really well,” and “fast is better than slow” (Google Inc., 2014).

Ecommerce Mission Statement Examples To Inspire You

This brief but powerful statement emphasizes several goals important to Google, including excellence in customer service and setting high standards for employees and Google’s products. McDonald’s brand mission is “Our customers’ favorite place and way to eat. Our worldwide operations are aligned around a global strategy called Plan to Win, which focuses on exceptional customer experience – people, products, location, price and promotion. We strive to continuously improve our operations and enhance our customers’ experience.” Committed To be effective, this mission statement must filter down to all employees and motivate them to adopt that mission (Edwards, 2012).

One limitation of such all-encompassing goals is that frontline and operational employees do not relate or connect with the goals, and are disengaged from the process – the flavor of the month…. A CEO/management team that effectively translates high-level objectives into on-the-ground activities will have great success in engaging staff! Of course, a strong element of walk-the-talk is required for management.

The results of a survey of 1,500 executives illustrate how the need to create an inspiring vision creates a tremendous challenge for executives. When asked to identify the most important characteristics of effective strategic leaders, 98 percent of executives listed “a strong sense of vision” first. Meanwhile, 90 percent of executives expressed serious doubts about their own ability to create a vision. Not surprisingly, many organizations do not have formal visions. Many organizations that have orientations find that employees do not accept and follow the orientations. Having a cohesive vision that employees embrace therefore gives an organization an edge over its competitors.

At WestJet, Clive Beddoe and his team developed its mission statement: “To enrich the lives of everyone in the world of WestJet by providing safe, friendly and affordable air travel.” A mission such as WestJet speaks to an organization’s reasons for being. Well-written mission statements effectively capture the organization’s identity and “Who are we?” They provide answers to the basic question. While a vision looks to the future, a mission captures key aspects of an organization’s past and present.

Nike Mission Statement And Vision Statement In A Nutshell

Organizations need support from key stakeholders such as employees, owners, suppliers and customers if they are to prosper. A mission statement that engages stakeholders helps them develop an understanding of why they should support the organization and clarifies what important role or purpose the organization plays in society—also known as a “social license to operate.” For example, Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Google followed this mission by developing the most popular Internet search engine in its early days. The organization continues to fulfill its mission through various strategic actions, including offering its Internet browser Google Chrome to the online community, providing free email through its Gmail service, and making books available online for browsing.

In ancient times, Aesop said, “United we stand, divided we fall.” This provides a helpful way to think about the relationship between vision and mission. Executives are asking for trouble if they fragment their organization’s vision and mission by emphasizing different domains. Some universities have fallen into this trap. Many large public universities were founded in the late 1800s with the purpose of educating citizens. As the 20th century unfolded, generating scientific knowledge through research became increasingly important to these universities. Many university presidents responded by creating a vision of building the scientific reputation of their schools. This created a dilemma for professors: should they devote more of their time and energy to teaching students (as the mission required) or to their research studies (as ambitious presidents demanded through their visions)? Some universities today continue to struggle with this trade-off and remain houses divided against themselves. In sum, an organization is more effective to the extent that its vision and its mission aim employees’ efforts in the same direction.

An organization’s vision and mission provide a broad, overall sense of the direction of an integrated organization. To work toward achieving these overall aspirations, organizations need to create goals—narrow goals that provide clear and tangible guidance to employees as they perform their work on a day-to-day basis. The most effective goals are that

An easy way to remember these dimensions is to combine the first letter of each into one word: SMART (Figure 2.4 “Creating SMART Goals”). Employees are in a better position to succeed to the extent that the organization’s goals are smart. A goal is specific if it is clear rather than vague. WestJet’s Vision “By 2016, WestJet will be one of the world’s five most successful international airlines providing our guests with a friendly and caring experience that will change air travel forever.”

Home Depot And Nike Companies Mission Statements

A goal is measurable to the extent that it can be quantified whether the goal has been achieved. WestJet’s goal of becoming one of the world’s five most successful international airlines by 2016 offers a very simple and clear measurement: WestJet will either be in the top five by 2016 or not.

Achieving a goal is aggressive if it presents a significant (as opposed to easy) challenge to the organization. A series of research studies have demonstrated that performance is strongest when goals are challenging but achievable. Such goals force people to test and stretch the limits of their abilities. This can lead to reaching surprising heights.

WestJet is committed to growing responsibly and ensuring it is an environmentally sustainable airline and supports the IATA target of carbon neutral growth in its industry beyond 2020. WestJet already operates one of the most modern and fuel-efficient fleets in North America.

Achieving carbon neutral growth is a challenge for WestJet that will require the combined efforts of the airline and its supplier partners such as aircraft manufacturers, airports and government. In 2012, WestJet reported “Our significant investments in fleet and technology have greatly improved our aircraft fuel efficiency and ability to operate our business more cost effectively. Between 2000 and 2012, we improved our fuel efficiency by 44.8 per cent per revenue tonne kilometre. The resulting fuel savings is equivalent to the amount of fuel used to fly a Boeing Next-Generation 737 from Calgary to Toronto and approximately 44,135 times (based on our 2012 fuel consumption). (Quigley, 1994)

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It’s useful to know that easy-to-achieve goals aren’t easy, but they undermine employees’ overall motivation and effort. Michelangelo said, “The greatest danger for most of us is not in setting our goal too high and falling short, but in setting our goal too low and falling short.” The better you do on the course. Considering that you have worked, you only need 60 percent on the final exam to earn an A for the course. Understandably, some students study hard enough to score 90 percent or 100 percent on the final exam. Similarly, setting organizational goals that are easy to reach encourages employees to work hard enough to reach the goals.

It is tempting to extend this logic and thinking to conclude that setting impossible goals encourages even stronger effort and performance from staff. However, people act rationally and become discouraged and give up when faced with goals that have little chance of being realistically reached. For example, if Starbucks had set a one-year time frame to regain a share price of $35, it would have attracted derision. The company could not be turned around so quickly. Similarly, if WestJet’s energy efficiency goal were a 100 percent improvement, WestJet’s employees would probably not embrace it. Thus goals should also be realistic, i.e. their achievement is feasible.

Most of us find that deadlines are motivating and they help you structure your work hours. The same is true

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