Since the early 1970s, vision statements have been used by corporations to try and communicate their direction. Now that it’s 2014, I’ve started to question whether vision statements are still relevant, and if businesses with them actually follow them in their day-to-day business?
First, we’ll need to clarify what is a vision statement. For our purposes, a vision statement is something that outlines the goals and aspirations for the future of a company, creating a guide for how to do business with consistent organizational values to create a particular culture within the company.
What I’ve seen in my experience is that many companies decide they need a vision statement and start by defining their company values, but after their vision statement is crafted fail to use it to guide their company moving forward. This lack of follow through is evident in John Kotter’s Forbes.com article “Your Company Vision: If It’s Complicated, It Shouldn’t Be.” Kotter writes that 70% of employees can’t recall their company’s vision statement, which is an indicator that many vision statements aren’t being used as a guide.
Let’s take a closer look at a few vision statements.
Clarity of Vision
When creating a vision statement, use specifics that are relevant to your organization. Sometimes even high profile organizations need to be reminded of this–a December 2012 WashingtonPost.com article found that NASA’s mission and vision statements were generic and could apply to almost any government research and development agency, not what you would expect from an agency with the high profile, and large budget, of NASA.
Offering an organization-specific vision that all employees understand is vital to a successful vision statement. The more tailored the information, the more likely all employees will use it as their vision.
Same Page Selling
Good vision statements should provide motivation to attain corporate goals, which should lead to bigger and better things for a business. Throughout history, some individuals have been able to clearly articulate a vision and use it to motivate their employees. A great example is the simple vision statement Bill Gates and Paul Allen created for Microsoft: “A computer on every desk and in every home.” According to Forbes.com, they reached success by “creating a unified platform for computing that reaches across all device platforms earning them $60 billion with an operating margin of 35% and $20 billion in earnings a year.”
Last year, in response to the changing landscape of computers and portable devices, the CEO of Microsoft at the time, Steve Ballmer, introduced a new corporate mission statement for the company, “to create a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most.”
Which vision statement do you think is more powerful, more clear and more actionable for Microsoft’s employees? Had they asked me, I would have tweaked the original statement instead of creating an entirely new one–“A computer in every hand, every day.” Simple, to the point and something for all of Microsoft’s employees to strive to achieve.
A Novel Idea
One of the the most successful corporate visions was created and executed by Jack Welch when he took over General Electric (GE) in 1981. His vision for GE was “to become the most competitive enterprise in the world by being number one or number two in every business in which we compete.” Simple and clear for the employees to understand.
To do this, Welch tried to build an organization that by the late 1980s made workers at all levels responsible for their own work, tried to eliminate unproductive work and transformed attitudes throughout the 300,000 employees GE had at the time.
Known as the “Work Out,” Welch’s expectation was simple–to break down hierarchies to ensure a free flow of information from top to bottom and encourage employees at every level to be open to new ideas, talk face-to-face and listen to each other. Welch handled every conflict in person and talked them out with his employees. His vision was so successful that it still endures today within GE as thousands of employees from every level of the company are trained annually at the Jack F. Welch Leadership Center. What was Welch’s ultimate legacy at GE? That he succeeded in transforming a complacent behemoth into an energized company ready to face world competition within a decade.
Of the Most Importance
Since the idea of vision statements arose business leaders have learned that vision statements need to become a part of a company’s DNA. They need to apply to everything a business does–including how it does business with customers, vendors and, especially, employees. The absence of a vision statement, or a poorly written one, are lost opportunities for building organizational culture, attracting and retaining talent and ultimately increasing productivity.
The caveat? All decision-makers within a company have to live the vision statement–it needs to be their operating system in relations with customers, vendors and employees. Anything less and a company’s vision statement will be nothing more than words on paper, hollow and empty.