(This is the second part of yesterday’s post on the difference between vision and mission statements)
Once you have your vision statement, it’s time to get down to your mission. Imagine you’ve stated the vision that you want to be a great employer. What are the steps to achieving that?
As an exercise, think about this for a second. Imagine you chose the vision to be a better employer? How would you do that? Perks, pay and benefits come to mind. What about safety? Employee parties, maybe subsidize the soda machine. We’ve just come up with a handful of things that would take us toward our vision. That is exactly what a mission statement is. It’s a list of steps.
Picking what you want to be when you grow up is probably a decision you want to make with just your key people. It’s important and you want buy-in, but as the key stakeholder or owner, you REALLY have to buy in. I wouldn’t want Doug Hilligoss (my boyhood neighbor) to pick what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I might ask my parents and get them to approve of the idea.
When it comes time to discuss the mission statement though, I think you need to have everyone in the company weigh in. For most missions, it’s the guy on the shop floor who is going to make it happen. Let everyone brainstorm and pick the top five. When you have achieved those, pick another five.
