Vision Creation
I travel a great deal all over the United States and Canada providing seminars on business management. When I ask about corporate vision or even corporate mission I am always surprised with the responses I get. Very few (1 in 15, maybe even less) companies have a corporate vision or mission. Of those companies that have a vision or mission very few of the individuals in my seminars knew what they were and even fewer still were not a part of creating those important statements.
Out of all the seminar participants I have had this year and asked them about their corporate mission and vision only 2 said that their companies regularly meet about how their company was incorporating their mission and vision into their everyday work.
The reason for a vision is that it is the inception thought of your company. If your company is already in existence the reason for recreating your vision is for plotting a new course or direction. Most companies change their vision with the change of their CEO. If your company has changed CEOs many times your company may be suffering from change exhaustion.
Creating a vision is a way of having all individuals in your company on the same wavelength. It will help have your employees agree on how the company is to roll forward into the future and how it work together to obtain goals. Your vision involves each individual that works for your company so that they can express the vision.
When creating a mission you are creating the reason for why the company exists or what problem does the company solve. Not included in the mission is how individuals relate to carry out the inception thought or direction. This is included when creating the vision.
When creating a vision you might want to create a vision for your self, your team, your department as well as your whole company. Doing so may make all tasks easier to achieve.
When creating a vision you want to include everyone in your company. This might not seem feasible due to the size of your company or work group but I will break it down for you here. Creating a vision is a change mechanism and unless you get all individuals involved in the creation you cannot create buy-in which you need for implementation.
The first step in creating a vision is to brainstorm the qualities, values and/or virtues the company extols and emulates. In brainstorming it is imperative that the participants know there is no wrong contribution. If your company is too large to have face-to-face brainstorming sessions an email format can be used as well (IE: Send out an email to all employees asking for their input on what are the qualities, values and/or virtues the company extols and emulates.). Make sure to include instructions to obtain a minimum submission of 8 qualities, values and/or virtues. If there are groups that can not be reached – you will need a representative(s) of the missing group(s) that is(are) trusted by the missing group to contribute for them.
The next step would be to compile a complete list of the submissions and eliminate any duplicate values. Then send this list back out to all the contributors and have each contributor choose their top 6 from the list.
Again, a new list of 8-10 of the top values chosen should be compiled from the top chosen qualities, values and/or virtues. With this new list create one to two sentences that encapsulate the ideas presented and send this out to the contributors to adjust and ensure it encompasses the language that the contributors use.
Finally, send the statement out to the contributors as a final document for them to agree to and sign.
By involving everyone in the company you create a vision that encapsulates the ideas of the entire group. The further involvement and contribution into something larger than one individual creates a sense of pride and attachment, which increases buy-in. By having each person work with the wording of the vision it allows each person to ensure their language, their dialect of language is included in the vision making them an instrumental part of vision and creates further buy-in. The final signing creates the agreement.
Once you have a vision that works for all in your company then you can start the strategic planning process.
Tracy Slotin, MBA
CEO
The Executive Sandbox ® Change Consultants
http://www.ExecutiveSandbox.com
“If you wish to arrive at a place you do not know, you must take a path you do not know.” –T.S. Elliot
Out of all the seminar participants I have had this year and asked them about their corporate mission and vision only 2 said that their companies regularly meet about how their company was incorporating their mission and vision into their everyday work.
The reason for a vision is that it is the inception thought of your company. If your company is already in existence the reason for recreating your vision is for plotting a new course or direction. Most companies change their vision with the change of their CEO. If your company has changed CEOs many times your company may be suffering from change exhaustion.
Creating a vision is a way of having all individuals in your company on the same wavelength. It will help have your employees agree on how the company is to roll forward into the future and how it work together to obtain goals. Your vision involves each individual that works for your company so that they can express the vision.
When creating a mission you are creating the reason for why the company exists or what problem does the company solve. Not included in the mission is how individuals relate to carry out the inception thought or direction. This is included when creating the vision.
When creating a vision you might want to create a vision for your self, your team, your department as well as your whole company. Doing so may make all tasks easier to achieve.
When creating a vision you want to include everyone in your company. This might not seem feasible due to the size of your company or work group but I will break it down for you here. Creating a vision is a change mechanism and unless you get all individuals involved in the creation you cannot create buy-in which you need for implementation.
The first step in creating a vision is to brainstorm the qualities, values and/or virtues the company extols and emulates. In brainstorming it is imperative that the participants know there is no wrong contribution. If your company is too large to have face-to-face brainstorming sessions an email format can be used as well (IE: Send out an email to all employees asking for their input on what are the qualities, values and/or virtues the company extols and emulates.). Make sure to include instructions to obtain a minimum submission of 8 qualities, values and/or virtues. If there are groups that can not be reached – you will need a representative(s) of the missing group(s) that is(are) trusted by the missing group to contribute for them.
The next step would be to compile a complete list of the submissions and eliminate any duplicate values. Then send this list back out to all the contributors and have each contributor choose their top 6 from the list.
Again, a new list of 8-10 of the top values chosen should be compiled from the top chosen qualities, values and/or virtues. With this new list create one to two sentences that encapsulate the ideas presented and send this out to the contributors to adjust and ensure it encompasses the language that the contributors use.
Finally, send the statement out to the contributors as a final document for them to agree to and sign.
By involving everyone in the company you create a vision that encapsulates the ideas of the entire group. The further involvement and contribution into something larger than one individual creates a sense of pride and attachment, which increases buy-in. By having each person work with the wording of the vision it allows each person to ensure their language, their dialect of language is included in the vision making them an instrumental part of vision and creates further buy-in. The final signing creates the agreement.
Once you have a vision that works for all in your company then you can start the strategic planning process.
Tracy Slotin, MBA
CEO
The Executive Sandbox ® Change Consultants
http://www.ExecutiveSandbox.com
“If you wish to arrive at a place you do not know, you must take a path you do not know.” –T.S. Elliot
Labels: Vision
posted by Tracy Slotin at 1:00 AM
0 comments
