If you find yourself working in a corporation you'll know that the vision and mission statements are probably two of the most important things you will be tasked with.
They basically summarize, often in one sentence to a short paragraph, what the company stands for. It's an articulation of its DNA - we are W and X, Y, and Z is what we get up every day and commit ourselves to achieving.
Yet, these statements often are pie-in-the-sky statements made to create the impression that the company has laser focus. You'll never see a company's vision and mission statement say "Our mission is to create a product that is good enough that we land a few customers and can then get acquired by a larger player in the market and walk away with millions."
Even though for a lot of businesses that is their vision and mission (and there's nothing wrong with that, small-cap innovation is essential to developing new products, and larger companies acquiring smaller companies provides increased distribution capacity for such innovations).
My point though is that mission and vision statements rarely represent a company's true DNA. But as a PR professional you should do your best to try and get as accurate a representation as possible (while obviously not undermining the organization's brand by articulating things such as exit strategies).
In this spirit I was actually fairly impressed with GO transit's recently announced passenger charter. While it's not a mission or vision statement, it comes as close as you can get. In response to customer frustration, GO transit pledged five things to customers...
• We will do our best to be on time.
• We will always take your safety seriously.
• We will keep you in the know.
• We will make your experience comfortable.
• We will help you quickly and courteously.
The reason I liked this and think it's a great PR move, is not so much that it will appease the public (let's face it, the public will judge based on the actual service they experience). Rather, it sets an organization mandate... it let's every single person working at GO Transit know that when they get up and come to work, they should be helping make those five pledges to the public a reality.
In this light, mission or vision statements (or in this case charters) are critical to helping an organization hold itself accountable to it's directives and to maintain focus on such directives.
So if you ever get tasked with writing a vision or mission statement, take your time with it as it does have the potential to be a catalyst that can change the fundamental culture of an organization.
And if you are in an organization that is not functioning properly or efficiently, talk to your CEO about whether a new vision or mission statement might be a good idea. You might be surprised at how problems that no one could figure out how to fix suddenly become very fixable when people remind themselves of what the vision and mission of the organization is. Often times organizations go off-the-tracks because folks simply aren't making day-to-day business decisions based on the vision or mission of the organization.
They basically summarize, often in one sentence to a short paragraph, what the company stands for. It's an articulation of its DNA - we are W and X, Y, and Z is what we get up every day and commit ourselves to achieving.
Yet, these statements often are pie-in-the-sky statements made to create the impression that the company has laser focus. You'll never see a company's vision and mission statement say "Our mission is to create a product that is good enough that we land a few customers and can then get acquired by a larger player in the market and walk away with millions."
Even though for a lot of businesses that is their vision and mission (and there's nothing wrong with that, small-cap innovation is essential to developing new products, and larger companies acquiring smaller companies provides increased distribution capacity for such innovations).
My point though is that mission and vision statements rarely represent a company's true DNA. But as a PR professional you should do your best to try and get as accurate a representation as possible (while obviously not undermining the organization's brand by articulating things such as exit strategies).
• We will do our best to be on time.
• We will always take your safety seriously.
• We will keep you in the know.
• We will make your experience comfortable.
• We will help you quickly and courteously.
The reason I liked this and think it's a great PR move, is not so much that it will appease the public (let's face it, the public will judge based on the actual service they experience). Rather, it sets an organization mandate... it let's every single person working at GO Transit know that when they get up and come to work, they should be helping make those five pledges to the public a reality.
In this light, mission or vision statements (or in this case charters) are critical to helping an organization hold itself accountable to it's directives and to maintain focus on such directives.
So if you ever get tasked with writing a vision or mission statement, take your time with it as it does have the potential to be a catalyst that can change the fundamental culture of an organization.
And if you are in an organization that is not functioning properly or efficiently, talk to your CEO about whether a new vision or mission statement might be a good idea. You might be surprised at how problems that no one could figure out how to fix suddenly become very fixable when people remind themselves of what the vision and mission of the organization is. Often times organizations go off-the-tracks because folks simply aren't making day-to-day business decisions based on the vision or mission of the organization.
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