People Leadership | No. 3

Vision & Mission

When discussing the difference between leadership and management, we highlighted the importance of a people leader in defining the overall “Why” for the group of people he or she is leading. A “Why” that should be crystal-clear is the one that is linked to the question “Why does your team exist?”. You should be able to answer this as precisely and clearly as possible, as it would be the source of motivation and inspiration for the people who you lead.

Finding purpose is what is being addressed by working on formulating a vision and a mission for the group of people you are leading. No matter how large or small is your team, whether it is part of a larger organization or not, the objective is the same.

In this article, we would describe how you could work with your team in finding your team’s purpose.

How to run an effective Mission & Vision Workshop

Before starting defining the team’s mission and vision you should inform on the overall purpose and discuss the need for this. Your team would need to understand why they should formulate a mission and vision, so they can best contribute. A schematic like the one shared below could give the overall explanation of what a mission and vision are, to begin with. It depicts the vision as the final destination and the mission as the journey towards that destination.

If you are a unit in a larger organization the next step is to set the overall scene. You might want to start by reciting the whole organization's purpose, then narrowing it down to the different functions, such as different departments' visions and purpose statements that are relevant to your people unit. This will allow focusing the energy on defining your vision and mission at the right level.

Formulating a Vision Statement

When addressing the mission and vision for your team it is better to start thinking about your vision first. A formulated vision will allow everyone to see the destination you wish to reach.

Formulating the vision means formulating a Vision statement, a short and precise sentence that captures the essence of your team's existence. So here you are looking to first create several key statements, feelings, and attributes with your team and then capture the best of them in a consolidated vision.

You should ask your team, to think ahead in the future, something between 2 to 4 years would be a good time horizon. Here are some example questions for guidance on formulating a vision:

• What do we aspire to be in 3 years from now?

• What would be our ideal state then?

• What value we would be creating for our customers when they will interact with us?

• What value we would be creating for our colleagues when they will interact with us?

• How our customers/colleagues will feel about working with us?

Allow some time for the team to think and write down their thoughts. You could allocate something like 5-10 min, and then see if more time is needed. Once completed ask each team member to share their thoughts, and let them talk. Your role here is to listen carefully and capture some of the key statements and how they describe their aspirations.

Afterwords using your notes and inputs try to cluster these thoughts, you can do this either all together on a board or as part of the dialogue. Try to see which of the elements could consolidate best the vision, working towards formulating a short and precise vision statement. You might need additional time beyond this workshop to sharpen further your team’s vision with better words; for now, you are looking into a draft statement that all the team agrees and gets motivated and inspired by reading it.

Formulating a Mission Statement

Once you have defined your aspiration and agreed on your team’s vision then you can focus on formulating a mission statement. The vision is about the future ideal state, whereas the mission is shifted more towards the present state to provide purpose for the team.

The mission statement is where the team would look for direction when thinking about priorities and how to do things. It is important that you clarify what is the primary function of the team; what are the key tasks that your team is responsible for doing. Especially for the priorities, you should consider in advance the overall boundary of where the mission should be formulated, so you can take a dialogue on what is on focus and what is not.

In formulating this boundary, you might need to remind the team of the important and primary stakeholders, how the interactions are within the organization structure (if applicable) and what are their expectations. Every team would have also secondary tasks but it is important when formulating the mission that you focus on your primary role as a team so you can define a strong mission statement.

Some example questions on formulating a mission statement could be:

• What do we do/create?

• How are we going to achieve the vision?

• Who and why are we creating value for?

Here as well you will need to reach a short and precise sentence that captures how you will reach your goal(s) and what is the purpose for your team. Allow the team time to think and write down their thoughts. Then take a dialogue and capture the essence and brainstorm in a similar manner as you worked on the vision statement.

Workshop Output

Once you have defined as a team both the mission and vision, take a look at the two statements. Do they provide an accurate depiction of the destination and the journey?

Leaving this workshop your team and you should have a clear direction and a shared purpose in which you would be working all together to reach. This shared purpose would be the source of motivation and inspiration that will enable you and your team to work effectively and be able to influence the ones you are interacting with towards achieving the vision.