From: John Yost
[john.yost@procompass-ms.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003
5:29 AM
To: Business Leader
Subject: ProCompass Newsletter -
Issue 9
Issue 9 September
2, 2003
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In this Issue:
Aligning Vision, Mission and Goals
Businesses and organizations typically operate according
to a strategy that guides them toward their goals. This strategy generally involves some sort of Vision as to
what they expect the company to become.
It includes a definition of who their customers are and the methods by
which they expect to produce and market their goods or services to their
customers. It also includes
shorter-term goals or mission and the underlying values that are important to
the business.
Sometimes such strategies are clearly defined so that
each part of the organization can align its goals and objectives to serve the
strategic vision of the organization. Many times however, such alignment is
left to chance. Consider the
following scenario:
The President of a Wholesale and Distribution determines
that he wants to company to be defined as “The top wholesaler/distributor in
our industry in terms of customer and employee satisfaction”. The president then directs the
executive team to align their respective divisions to this new vision.
� The Human
Resources manager determines that he can best serve this new vision by
implementing a new training program to upgrade the employee skills on their
existing order processing system.
� The
Operations manager determines that what is needed is an upgrade of software and
develops a plan to replace existing order processing system with new state of
the art system.
�
The Marketing and Sales manager
determines that improved customer satisfaction is what is need and develops a
plan for customer service training for all employees who deal with customers.
� The Finance
Manager decides to reapportion the budget to reduce sofware and training
expense to make more money available for new a computer infastructure with an
integreated ERP system.
Now the question is, have each of these managers aligned
their strategies with the new vision?
Well, Yes it appears that they have. But the most important question might be, “What is the
probability that the company will move in the direction of achieving their
vision”. Probably little or
none. The separate strategies are
not coordinated, and probably working at cross-purposes. And if you multiply this by all
the people who are directed to develop goals to support these efforts it would
be a wonder if any results occur at all, in spite of the fact that everyone is
working diligently to become aligned.
The answer to such a situation of course involves
communication and coordination, but also a plan or strategy for deployment
throughout the organization
�
Start by defining a vision for the
company. A vision describes what
you expect the company to look like in the future. This description is generally not specifically defined but
provide a general description of what we want the company to be.
�
Develop a mission statement that
defines what must be done in the next 1–3 years to move the company toward that
vision.
�
Identify the critical success
factors that must be accomplished in order to achieve the mission.
�
Develop specific Goals and action
steps to accomplish the Critical
Success Factors
Once these are defined by the executive team they can be
translated to the other levels of the company, for example certain critical
success factors associated with the Finance may be assigned to the Finance
Executive who will develop Goals and Action steps to ensure the critical
success factors. This executive
may in turn assign goals or success factors to other employees who will develop further goals and action steps.
Planning and achieving success in an organization is very similar to a making a journey. In order to make this journey successful, you would probably want a roadmap; (goals) which will guide you in the most appropriate direction. But, a roadmap is useless unless you start with an idea of your destination (vision) for the journey.
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