Introduction
Setting a clear direction will help align everyone to work towards the same goals, with a strong vision statement informing you where you are going, the mission statement telling you how you will get there, and an objective hierarchy to prioritize the steps right in front of you required to achieve it. Without direction, it will be impossible to achieve anything together, know what to prioritize, and create momentum and increase velocity. Shipping small things does not add up to a strategy. Iteration is not a substitute for a plan. And nobody could iterate their way from candles to electric light.
Vision - the destination
Vision is not some form of corporate poetry. It is a definite, non-consensus claim about how the future must look. Most companies mistake internal ambition for a vision. They draft flattering self-portraits about market share, execution speed, or prestige. But an institutions value exist entirely on the outside. A true vision does not describe what your organization does. It describes the reality of the world once your work is finished.
Reaching the vision should require the work of others as well. If you can reach it entirely on your own, it is your mission, not your vision. A vision describes the reality you want to exist. Defining it tells you which direction to build in whenever new opportunities arise.
The vision statement is a critical tool to keeping your organization aligned on the abstract future you are building. Knowing why we are doing this extremely hard thing–building a organization–will help you weather any storm along the way. And there will be storms.
If your vision statement contains your organizations name, you have not envisioned a future, you are just describing your own ego. A real vision is an altered state of the world that should remain true even if your organization dies on while fighting to create it.
This will tell you who your collaborative partners can be, which adjacent markets can be pivoted to, etc.
This is not a per team or per product thing. Even though that is the norm today, this often results in varying versions of reality and a splintered strategy with competing priorities
Eu-topos vs Ou-topos
You need to distinguish between the two Greek definitions of utopia:
- Eu-topos: The good place
- Ou-topos: The place that cant exist
Do not define a vision of the world that cannot exist, sure it should feel out of reach, but not impossible.
Mission - Your burden
If vision is the world you want to see, the mission should reflect your organization's role in realizing that vision. Once the vision is fixed, the mission is the burden this organization will carry. That role is determined by ability, geography, influence, heritage, and scale. A mission that could be lifted onto a competitor without anyone noticing is not a mission at all.
When teams is only "shipping small deliveries," they end up running fast in no particular direction. A mission can give the right managers, executives and leaders the courage to build big things, instead of trying to A/B test your way to breakthroughs. A huge part of the mission is frankly to determine everything you are not going to be doing, this will inform prioritization and scoping of initiatives. What we do, and what others will do.
The twin sins
Be careful about the people that tell you aimless incrementalism through stakeholder driven prioritization or financialization of everything is the right direction for anything.
- Aimless agility
- Financialization
When an organization lacks a clear mission, finance, competing priorities, and politics steps in to fill the vacuum. Instead of building toward a definite future, leadership manages for quarterly earnings, prioritization alignment meetings, and with enough grit and perseverance any high EQ executive will get their agenda met.
Initiatives
Together with the useful objectives, initiatives and their respective projects complete the pillars and steps to move as a cohesive unit on the same path to the same eu-topia.