Can We Painlessly Craft a Meaningful Mission and Vision?
Challenge
Seeing the words “mission statement” on the agenda for an upcoming offsite meeting can strike dread in the heart of executives. They legitimately wonder, “Are we going to spend four hours talking about whether we should be answering to ‘shareholders’ versus ‘stakeholders?’” They may even be unsure of the inherent value of a mission or vision statement. What are these pithy phrases meant to accomplish, other than serve as an adornment for the inside cover of the annual report?
What if we told you there was an easier way to rapidly articulate a distinct and impactful mission or vision for your organization?
How Strategic Offsites Can Help
Our approach tackles both problems: arduous wordsmithing and generic results. To combat long hours debating whether your organization is “innovative” or “cutting-edge,” we move your team’s conversation to a higher altitude.
We’ll give you examples of a variety of mission or vision statements, and you’ll provide input and debate whether the mission should be pithy or highly descriptive and how aspirational the vision should be. When well-crafted, mission and vision statements provide an action guide. They serve as a compass for decision-making and prioritization.
We encourage you to focus on aligning around a draft that is “close enough” instead of attempting to leave the room with a final version.
When the new version goes up on your website, each meeting participant will feel a sense of ownership, and you'll have a better product as a result of their teamwork.
Our first step is to collect all your team members’ ideas. Whether in the room or through pre-meeting surveys, we ask for their initial ideas around important concepts, words, or phrases. We then identify where the energy is, calling out common themes or specific words to include as the mission and/or vision are drafted.
Once the participants have agreed on a set of key concepts, the final polishing can be done offline by your marketing department, ad agency, or a smaller subgroup of the team.
When the new version goes up on your website, each meeting participant will feel a sense of ownership, and you’ll have a better product as a result of their teamwork.