Your team needs to define both its vision and its mission to be successful.
While they are often misunderstood and confused with one another, a VISION is what you want to be known for as an organization – it is the ideal imagined result you ultimately want your company to accomplish, and should be challenging enough to inspire your people’s imagination.
A leader’s role is to set the vision for his team, and then to identify the MISSION, or process behaviors that will lead to that destination.
This is your team’s Vision and Mission…
So, what’s the difference?
The difference is between your group remaining mediocre and unfocused in their efforts, or becoming a GREAT Team!
Some famous vision statements include Pepsi’s “Beat Coke” from the eighties, Southwest Airlines’ “Become THE low-fare airline” from the nineties, and Honda’s “We will crush, squash, and slaughter Yamaha” from the seventies. Maybe yours will be more like GE’s “We bring good things to life,” or Disney’s “We make people happy,” but your vision is the core, concise, defining purpose that explains the reasoning for everything done in your organization.
It is vital that you define for your people what exactly the core purpose is that drives every effort and decision made in your organization, because then it becomes far easier for you to make those decisions and your people will better understands the reasons behind them, as long as you truly base every decision on the foundational purpose you claim is your vision statement.
It then also becomes easier to clear away the clutter of ideas or activities that do not contribute to realizing that vision.
But that is only the first step in getting ALL of your organization on board. After you have identified the ONE thing that is your organization’s driving purpose, you then need to look at and define the MISSION process goals and actions required to accomplish it.
For our basketball program, the vision was “We will be better people, and take better shots than every opponent.” But simply saying that didn’t make it happen. We had to put legs under it – and those legs are the MISSION objectives that would help us reach our intended vision. You can’t accomplish the “what” without the “how!”
Mission action expectations should be based on measurable goals. In basketball, you can’t measure heart and hustle, but you can measure statistical performance – so we based our FOUR mission objectives on statistics that were important to our success.
Most basketball games are won by the team with fewer turnovers, more free throws, more rebounds, and the higher shooting percentage. These became the points we emphasized during half-time and post-game discussions, and they were the statistics we kept and emphasized during practices as well.
Everything we did was based one our vision – “Be better people, and take better shots than every opponent,” but that vision was supported and accomplished only by working to achieve the MISSION of our FOUR OBJECTIVES.
For you to get ALL members of your organization involved in a unifying cause, it is your job to create and advertise the ONE VISION flag that your team will carry into battle.
You must also make sure that everyone on your team and in your organization is aware of the need to meet the expected and prescribed goals that are the FOUR mission objectives most important to reaching that vision.
ONE defining vision of purpose, FOUR objectives to define your focus, and ALL of your people will soon start rowing in the same direction!
STEP 1. So, what is your suggested ONE Vision?
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STEP 2. What are your suggested FOUR Mission Objectives?
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STEP 3. Prioritize Mission Objectives
Identify the mission objectives that your team has suggested.
Consider… > Which will have the largest impact on your success?
(Remember the Pareto Principle: 80/20)
> Which can you effectively measure?
(Accountability is simply providing a consequence for meeting
or not meeting these team-generated objectives and numbers)
Determine which FOUR of them will become your team “Dashboard” and ultimately define what measurements your team will use to define successful focus.
STEP 4. Divide Objectives into Published Tasks and Times
For each of your four main mission objectives, what are the specific daily or weekly actions that must be taken to ensure that you meet those goals?
Think about each objective. List what needs to get done to achieve it.
Next, identify:
Who will be responsible for each item on the list?
When will each need to be done?
Finally – learn to PUBLISH OR PERISH!
Now, go print up signs and t-shirts, send out emails, and rewrite your letterhead to promote and share your Vision and Mission CONSISTENTLY with all your people…
If you liked this article, you will love Sean’s Teamwork Toolbox – over 50 free handouts and activities for smart team leaders!