Mission Statement - Develop Strategies, Goals and Action Plans.

Both people and organisations need to establish a strategic framework for significant success. This framework consists of:

• a vision for your future,
• a mission that defines what you are doing,
• values that shape your actions,
• strategies that zero in on your key success approaches, and
• goals and action plans to guide your daily, weekly and monthly actions.

Your organisation's success and your personal success depend on how well you define and live by each of these important concepts. In fact:

• Companies whose employees understand the mission and goals enjoy a 29% greater return than other firms.
• UK workers want their work to make a difference, but 75% do not think their company's mission statement has become the way they do business.

What Is a Vision and a Vision Statement?

A vision is a statement about what your organisation wants to become. It should resonate with all members of the organisation and help them feel proud, excited, motivated, and part of something much bigger than themselves. A vision should stretch the organization’s capabilities and image of itself. The vision gives shape and direction to the organization’s future. The normal vision ranges in length from a couple of words to several pages.

The vision is translated into actions via the development of a vision statement that expresses the overall vision. Create a shorter vision statement because employees will remember their shorter organisational vision statement better than they will remember a long vision statement.

When employees internalise the vision statement, they take action to make the vision statement come true.

Vision Statement Samples

"Year after year, ASDA and its people will be regarded as the best and most sought after store and fuel supplier group in the UK and America (Wal-Mart)."

"To be recognised and respected as one of the premier associations of HR Professionals." (Humba-HRConsultants in Leicester City Centre).

Personal Vision Statement

Your personal vision for your life can be as simple as a couple of words or as lengthy as 200 or more items you want to attain or accomplish.

Looking for help and samples to assist you to craft a mission statement that resonates and inspires? Both people and organisations need to establish a mission statement within a strategic framework to experience significant success. Identifying and sharing your mission statement, vision, values, strategies, goals and plans will engage your employees and fuel your future accomplishments. Here is what a mission statement entails and sample mission statements to help you develop your mission statement.

What Is a Mission Statement?

Mission or Purpose is a precise description of what an organisation does. The mission should describe the business the organisation is in. The mission is a definition of why the organisation exists currently. If the mission has been assimilated and integrated into your company culture, each member of your organisation should be able to verbally express this mission. Each employee's actions should demonstrate the mission statement in action.

Your company or organisation mission or purpose is most frequently expressed and shared as a mission statement.

Personal Mission Statement

Additionally, each person needs a mission for his or her life. The alignment of your life mission with your organization’s mission is one of the key factors in whether you are happy with your work and workplace. If your personal and organisational mission statements are congruent, you are most likely happy with your work choice. Take the time to develop your mission statement for your own life; compare your personal mission statement with the mission statement of your organisation. Do the mission statements meld?

Mission Statement Samples

These are examples of mission statements that have been developed and shared with the public.

1. "Our goal is simply stated. We want to be the best service organisation in the world." (IBM Mission Statement)

2. "FedEx is committed to our People-Service-Profit Philosophy. We will produce outstanding financial returns by providing totally reliable, competitively superior, global, air-ground transportation of high-priority goods and documents that require rapid, time-certain delivery." (Federal Express Mission Statement)

3. "To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people." (Wal-Mart Mission Statement)

4. "Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online." (gumtree.com Mission Statement)

5. "Our mission is to earn the loyalty of Range Rover owners and grow our family by developing and marketing UK manufactured vehicles that are world leaders in quality, cost, and customer enthusiasm through the integration of people, technology, and business systems." (Range Rover Mission Statement)

6. "In order to realise our Vision, our Mission must be to exceed the expectations of our customers, whom we define as guests, partners, and fellow employees. (mission) We will accomplish this by committing to our shared values and by achieving the highest levels of customer satisfaction, with extraordinary emphasis on the creation of value. (strategy) In this way we will ensure that our profit, quality and growth goals are met."

Your values are the core of what your organisation is and what your organisation cherishes. Values are beliefs that manifest in how an employee interacts in a workplace. Values represent an employee's most significant commitments to what he or she finds most important in life. (Values are also known as core values and as governing values; they all refer to the same sentiment.)

Value statements are developed from your values and define how people want to behave with each other in the organisation. Your value statements provide a measuring device against which you evaluate all of your actions and behaviours. Your value statements give words and meaning to the values that you decide to live by daily.

Value statements are declarations about how the organisation will value customers, suppliers, and the internal community. Value statements describe actions that are the living enactment of the fundamental values held by most individuals within the organisation.

The values of each of the individuals in your workplace, along with their experience, up-bringing, and so on, should meld together to form your corporate culture. The values of your senior leaders are especially important in the development of your culture. These leaders have a lot of power in your organisation to set the course and establish the quality of the environment for people. Your leaders have selected employees who they believe have congruent values and fit your workplace culture.

The Impact of Your Personal Values

If you think about your own life, your values form the cornerstones for all that you do, think, believe, and accomplish. Your personal values define where you spend your time, if you are truly living your values.

Each of you makes choices in life according to your most important four – ten values. Why not take the time to identify what is most important to you and to your organisation? Identify and live your values. Manifest your values through value statements.

Why Identify and Establish Values?

Effective organisations identify and develop a clear, concise and shared meaning of values/beliefs, priorities, and direction so that every employee understands and can contribute. Once defined, values impact every aspect of your organisation.

You must support and nurture the impact of these values and value statements or identifying values will have been a wasted exercise. Employees will feel fooled and misled unless they see the impact of the values and value statements within your organisation.

Create Impact Through Values and Value Statements

If you want the values you identify and the value statements you craft to have an impact within your organisation, the following must occur.

• Employees must demonstrate and model these values in action in their personal work behaviours, decision making, contribution, and interpersonal interaction.

• Organisational values help each person establish priorities in their daily work life. Priorities and actions must be grounded in the organisation's values and model the value statements identified for each employee's job.

• Values guide every decision that is made once the organisation has cooperatively created the values and the value statements.

• Rewards and recognition within the organisation are structured to recognise those people whose work embodies the values and the value statements that the organisation identified and embraced.

• Organisational goals are grounded in the identified values. Employees have identified how their goals and actions are congruent with and demonstrate the values daily.

• Adoption of the values and the behaviours that result is recognised in regular performance feedback.

• People hire and promote individuals whose outlook and actions are congruent with the organisation's values.

Only the active participation of all members of the organisation, plus the development of the systems and processes of the organisation grounded in the company's values, will ensure a truly organisation-wide, value-based, shared culture.

Sample Values

The following are examples of values: ambition, competency, individuality, equality, integrity, service, responsibility, accuracy, respect, dedication, diversity, improvement, enjoyment/fun, loyalty, credibility, honesty, inventiveness;  teamwork, excellence, accountability, empowerment, quality, efficiency, dignity, collaboration, stewardship, empathy, accomplishment, courage, wisdom, independence, security, challenge, influence, learning, compassion, friendliness, discipline/order, generosity, persistence, optimism, dependability, flexibility.

Although important aspects of your life and deserving of your attention, these are not values: family, church, professionalism. If you define what you value about each of these, then you are identifying the core value. For example, the core value in family might be close relationships; in church, spirituality; and in professionalism, demonstrating integrity in everything you do.

Google's Core Philosophy

Goggle calls its values and value statements, its philosophy and they re-look at the components every few years to make sure that the values are still the values.

• "Focus on the user and all else will follow.
• It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
• Fast is better than slow.
• Great just is not good enough.

In a strategic business framework for organisational planning and success, your strategies, goals, and action plans intertwine and build upon each other to create the appropriate steps to accomplish your mission and vision and live your values.

Organisations need strategies, goals, and action plans to cascade the mission through the organisation and engage the talents of all employees. Here is how strategies, goals and action plan to fit together so as to accomplish your mission and vision.

What Are Strategies?

Strategies are the broadly defined four or five key approaches the organisation will use to accomplish its mission and drive toward the vision. Goals and action plans usually flow from each strategy. One example of a strategy is empowerment and teams. Another is to pursue a new worldwide market in Asia. Another is to streamline your current distribution system using lean management principles.

A university Human Resources Development department established several broad strategies for growth. These included becoming the training and education resource of choice for all employees by offering one-stop access to any and all existing education and training resources. Additionally, they determined key strategies for expanding their funding base and moving courses online for customer convenience.

Another Human Resources department devised strategies to develop a superior workforce. These included eliminating poor performers; hiring from several choices of excellent candidates, not just "settling" on a candidate; developing succession planning; and increasing training and cross-training opportunities.

Sample Strategies

"Humba-HR-Consultant's (HHRC) efforts to advance its mission will include: The promotion of voluntary member interchange, observance of ethical and professional standards, the conduct of meetings and workshops on relevant human resources topics and issues, communication of our purpose and activities to the broader business community, cooperation with the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM); Chartered Institute Of Personnel Development (CIPD) as well as, other SHRM/CIPD professional and student chapters and related Human Resources organisations and the community involvement of our membership. The Association regularly publishes newsletters throughout the year which cover items such as monthly meeting highlights, future programs, Executive Board announcements, SHRM/CIPD and legislative updates and general human resources news. In addition, a Membership Directory and member skills listing are published."

Develop Goals and Action Plans

After you have developed the key strategies, turn your attention to developing several goals that will enable you to accomplish each of your strategies. Goals should reach beyond the terms in the traditional SMART acronym: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based. Take a look at a more modern translation of SMART goals.

In the example above, the group might consider setting one goal to hold a monthly chapter meeting. Another goal that supports the carrying out of their strategies is to schedule a relevant seminar quarterly. Another goal might include holding informal dinners and cocktail hours to support voluntary member exchange.

Once you have enabled strategy accomplishment through setting goals, you will want to develop action plans to accomplish each goal. Continuing with HHRC as the example, to offer a quarterly seminar, you will need to follow an action plan:

• Establish a cross section of professionals as a committee and meet to plan the sessions.

• Determine budget.

• Perform HHRC member needs assessment.

• Select topics based on member needs assessment.

• Locate exceptional speakers.

• Pick speaker and negotiate workshop length, pay, topic and objectives.

• Determine location and schedule the seminar.

• Plan advertising strategies, and so forth.

Make action plans as detailed as you need them to be and integrate the individual steps into your planning system. An effective planning system, whether it uses a software program, a paper and pen system, an Apple iPad, or any other choice that works for you, will keep your goals and action plans on track and on target.

All of the Strategic Planning Resources on this BLOG site.

Want to be one of the organisations, whose employees understand the mission and goals, which enjoy a 29% greater return than other firms? Involve as many people as you can in charting the road map I've shared with you for developing a strategic framework for your business. And, executed effectively, you will enjoy the greater return. With your vision, mission, values, strategies, goals and action plans developed and shared, you'll win, both personally and professionally.

• Strategy and Vision Statements
• Mission Statements
• Values and Value Statements
• Value Statement Samples
• Strategies, Goals and Action Plans