I read a post recently that was well written made some interesting points and had a huge amount of engagement, it was titled Mission, Vision and Values are dead, it went on to point out how nobody knows what they are and if you want your business to grow you should be talking about Impact, Way and Purpose.
All sounds good, right?
It looks like this is being innovative and creating a new approach to defining how to create a culture that drives performance.
He points out how the Mission Vision and Values first appeared in the 1960’s and points out that in today’s business world it could be argued it is largely irrelevant and most employees can’t recite it.
I agree, in poorly run and poorly led businesses that this is mostly true, I would however argue that “To make people happy” works for Disney and everyone that works there knows it.
My real problem with this though is it’s BS total BS, first Napoleon Hill Talked about values in Think and Grow Rich about sharing your goals with people and telling them how you would do it, that was 1937, Dale Carnegie did the same in how to win friend and influence people in 1938 they may not have called it Vision but they described it in detail showing that business schools are always at least 25 years behind the times.
Most businesses do a really poor job of defining who they are and why they exist and changing the names is just a way to excuse poor performance rather than tackling the core problem of poor leadership in the first place.
When it’s done well you get Apple as Simon Sinek in his book “Start With Why”
This is a classic example of changing the names of something and calling it innovative, I mean come on first off Simply saying Mission, Vision and Values shows how much people misunderstand.
Its Vision – Mission – Values you can’t have mission before Vision it’s like having a map with no destination maybe that’s why it doesn’t work for people.
First comes Vision, Vision is how you want to change the world or your part of it, it’s your dream your reason for existence, oh in the post I am talking about its called Impact so the very same thing then comes Mission, this is how you will do it, what is your purpose and how will you deliver that, oh wait purpose was the third bit of the new way wasn’t it?
Then comes Values if they are done well these are behaviours that the company and all the people in it demonstrate they don’t work if they are just platitudes and signs on the wall, this is the way you want people to behave oh again that was the last part of the new puzzle the way right.
I am all for coming up with new ways to approach something but just changing the names will never cure bad leadership or be an excuse for poor performance.
So what’s your reason for existence?
