Business success equals delivery of value!
A company exists for a specific purpose which is realized as its mission! The mission of an organization is to deliver specific value to its stakeholders. The meaning of value is different between stakeholders and evolves with time.
Lengthy international research has proved that the sole sustainable way of creating value and hence wealth is through delivered value!
Leaders who focus on realizing their corporate mission of delivering value have a much higher probability for succeeding vis-à-vis leaders who seek to create value as perceived value –the latter try to build on a ‘vision’ detached from reality.
Leaders confront themselves with a number of fundamental questions:
- Should their corporate mission be static and eternal?
- Should they not formulate a corporate vision? In case they should, what should its relationship to the corporate mission be?
- Should their organization be mission-led or vision-led?
Be aware, however, vision-led organizations depend on the leader whose vision shapes the future of the company –and whenever the leader changes they go through turbulence. Research shows that they are vulnerable to a poor choice of leader or to a leader with a vision contrasting the predecessor’s one! They confuse the organization and they seldom manage to realize the ‘new’ vision.
It proves, however, that managing the corporate Vision, as part of managing the company’s mission, can achieve and secure sustainability -the long-term corporate health, since it is guided by the company’s values and purpose!
The corporate Vision must be formulated, reviewed, revised and executed via strategic projects and innovation initiatives as a ‘normal’ management process.
Do not forget: The company’s mission is its compelling goal and its aligning philosophy -a well interconnected system of values and culture, processes and systems, competencies and knowhow, history and myths, teams and people …a tribal glue. It must stretch and challenge the organization so that it not only realizes its short and medium-term goals, but also achieves continuous improvement and change.
In mission-led companies, formulating and realizing a corporate vision is absolutely necessary for many reasons:
- It serves as a tangible picture of destination.
- It obliges the company to seek disruptive internal or external opportunities for sustaining competitive advantage and, hopefully, temporary monopolies and to identify and be ready to face disruptive threats.
- It is realized by defining and executing strategic projects aiming at creating disruptive opportunities, be them new services, products or processes, business excellence, process improvements, new markets and delighting the customer.
- It acts as a catalyst for
- It helps the leader achieve alignment and engagement through the process of its formulation and continual challenge –the process of thought, dialogue, debate, communication and execution.
- It helps revise the corporate mission so that it stays contemporary and achieve sustainability.
Great leaders recognize that their ‘brief’ is holistic. They create and manage a visioning culture based on the corporate values and mission. They establish a sense of partnership among all stakeholders, and especially the management team, for shaping the future, based on fast feedback and personal and team commitment propagated throughout the company. They know that only in this way they shall be able to keep updating the corporate mission so as to be always contemporary and continue creating and delivering great value to all company’s stakeholders in an ever changing environment.
10.10.2015