Why Clear Mission, Vision, and Values Are Important

Your company mission, vision, and values statements are potent tools for finding success. Many feel they are just inspiring words with little reality developed by leaders to convey their organization’s purpose, direction, and driving forces. Instead, they must be an integral part of your culture.

You are not just communicating your personal and company intentions when you craft clear, intentional, meaningful, and authentic statements. You are igniting a spark in your employees to understand and align with the organization’s objectives, empowering them to make consistent everyday decisions and fostering buy-ins in new directions.

When your company stands for values and ethics, employees can align with and support them, and they will embrace a sense of pride and empowerment.

Why do they matter?

Dynamic, well-established mission, vision, and values statements are vital to communicating your organization’s “who, what, and why” for all stakeholders. Feeling passionate about your organization’s products or services is never enough. To be successful, your entire organization must intentionally understand, embody, and live the framework of what drives the organization.

The more clearly a leader can articulate the high-level goals from the start, the less time and resources will be spent trying to fix poor communication, alignment, employee engagement, and unwanted cultural behaviors later. As a leader, your role in setting strategic goals and tactical plans that are more aligned, streamlined, and easier to communicate with your stakeholders has a huge impact on success.

Do Mission, Vision, and Value Statements Provide Benefits?

Mission, vision, and values statements must be embedded into the organization to be of value. For them to be profitable, the organization must:

• Communicate and document these statements through multiple methods to all levels of the organization.

• Ensure all leaders speak with one voice about mission, vision, and values.

• Celebrate and reinforce success stories demonstrating the mission, vision, and values.

• Embed vision and values in management practices and policies.

• Define, refine, and track short-term objectives compatible with the long-range vision.

Takeaways: The mission, vision, and values are key to communicating clearly and consistently with all company stakeholders. As a leader, by consciously understanding your organization’s values and goals, you can express what brought it into existence and how it continues to define, benefit, drive, and innovate the corporation.

Leadership Questions: How well do employees and customers understand your mission, vision, and values? As a leader, reviewing and adapting them regularly is vital to ensure they remain relevant and impactful. I suggest every five years or less.

Keys: |Application: Leaders and Employees |Status: Stratactical |Duration: DNA Embed |Impact: High