E007: Visions and Missions

This is the world of work podcast with James and James. Hi

everyone. Just before we get cracking into this week's episode, I wanted to jump on and mention our new support page. So as some of you may know, we're on a bit of a mission to increase accessibility to good quality management and career training. And if you'd like to support us in this, you can go to www.worldwork.io forward slash support to learn more.

Hi everyone. Welcome to episode seven. Oh yeah, I know, right. Episode Seven of a world of work podcast the mighty seven. It's a magic number this point that I admit, I never thought we'd get this far. Very

welcome there. I didn't think we necessarily would either after we've recorded the first one, like three times

worse each one. Anyway, today we're going to be chatting about vision, purpose, mission statements, and to some extent, the role of visions and purposes in the strategic thinking around organizations. But the core, appropriate core focus is on those visions and purposes.

So as ever, the running order is some definition discussion. It's a bit of research Roundup, list of a week stories from the keyboard, some final thoughts and top tips, and then we'll be checking out. And as always, you can follow what we've been talking about and also check out some of our resources by going to our website, which is the WoW podcast.org, and you can follow us on Twitter. Yeah, that's right, Twitter at the WoW podcast, you can, you can look us up there. Hopefully some of you are following us. So how you been? It's been good. I'm good, really good week. Great. I I don't want to sound cheesy, right, but

completely separate from doing my prep for this subject, yeah, I had a real moment of clarity about why I'm doing what I'm doing in my study and in my changing roles. At the moment, for those of you who don't know, I'm back at uni after 20 years and after a very un illustrious undergraduate

period of my life. So I had a real moment of clarity this week about why I'm doing it, and how important I think it is that people understand their options in the world work, and understand how they can navigate them. So that was, and it's highly, highly relevant, right? Because I understood, and I started thinking about, after I did my prep, what my vision and what my purpose. So, yeah, personal visions and purposes can be powerful. It was. It was a really relevant moment. Oh, isn't that good? Well, I'm pleased. Well, I had a pretty good week as well. I've got a few sort of projects that I'm working on, and I had some really good contacts with some new people in relation to some of them. So I've got some phone calls lined up with some people overseas, which I'm kind of excited about. That sounds both mysterious and exciting, it is. It's mysterious and exciting. We'll see. It's probably gonna end up being really boring, but it's fun. Oh, let's have less of that. Yeah, okay. It should be fun looking

at sort of behavior change and culture change, and bringing this stuff into financial functions, and just sharing some things about that and looking at that. So I'm looking forward to that really. Yeah, so that's lined up. We'll see how it goes. Great. So should we crack on with today? Yeah, do you want to Yeah, absolutely. So I should say I gotta be excited looking at this topic, because I've spent quite a bit of my time with organizations trying to wrestle with visions and purposes and missions, and in the nonprofit particularly sector, it's quite a big deal. So we're gonna start with some definitions, some terminology for everyone.

And I'm going to be really honest right now and say that it needs to be really clear that not everyone agrees on what some of these definitions are. I have sat in senior leadership meetings in a number of organizations, and there has been a disagreement about what a mission is versus a vision, what visions versus values, what a strategy is, first, strategic plan and so forth. So we're just going to give you some definitions from various dictionaries and websites, and then also a little bit of some of the experience of what we see things as. So from the business dictionary, which is mostly where we saw stuff this week, strategy is a method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such the achievement of a goal or solution to a problem. And we then, I think it's really important to talk about level important to talk about levels of

strategy, because that is often where people get derailed. They start off talking about mission, and suddenly they're writing 45 page documents. So a corporate strategy, or a organizational strategy is around answering a key question. So what is the business we're in? Yeah, what? What are we trying to do? Yeah, versus a business strategy, which is, you know, now we know what we're trying to do. How are we going to compete as a business, or how are we going to be unique, yeah, nonprofit, yeah. And that's like a key difference. But for what should we do? You know, we are an organization. What.

Should we be doing based on external factors and so on, is your corporate piece? And then, like you said, once you know what you should be doing, then how do you do it? Well, that's your business strategy. Yeah. And I often think it's a lot easier to define between that. And maybe it's because of my non, non corporate background. Those two terms don't usually sit that well, but we often talk about the difference between strategic as the strategic management and operational management. And operational management is predominantly about the practical processes, how we're improving efficiency, how we're managing costs and how we spend money. Because for us, it's not always about controlling costs and the nonprofits, but how do we effectively spend other people's money, versus strategic management, which is about thinking about much more about the organization and its place in the wider sector, which particularly a nonprofit matter for us. So now let's get on to the most contentious, I think, which is what's a vision statement and what's a mission statement? Okay, so we're going to define vision statement as an aspirational description of what an organization would like to achieve or accomplish in the middle, long term, future, a clear guide for choosing current and future courses of action.

I would say it's about painting a picture of what the future could be like, if you get it right, totally in non specific and we'll talk about it a bit more. But for me, the vision statement can be somewhat distanced from for underlying business. To some extent, it needs to be really relevant, but it could be slightly different as well. Yeah. And I think, I think where I've seen it work most effectively is where it gets a sense of where all the workers and all the customers or stakeholders agree that's what a good future looks like. Yeah. And then the debate comes about, how you get to that future, and what purpose this particular organization can serve in the future, mission statement, a written decla declaration of an organization's core purpose and focus that normally remains unchanged over time. Properly crafted, these statements serve as filters to separate what is important from what's not, and clearly state what markets will be served and how. I have a friend who always talks about mission statements, the clarity is what they don't say. So what are you not going to do? Yeah? So although they don't say that, they say what you're going to do, you should be able to take from that statement and the rest we're not doing. That's not our back. And so when you think about the two together, the vision is about the world you create, yep, and the mission is about how you particularly are going to further that? Yeah, absolutely. As an organization, I'm going to add one in as well, which is my one of my favorites, which is around strategy screens. So strategy screens are something I've seen that's been really effective working with organizations that are very practical and don't have huge corporate arms, and they are a set of a small number of questions that every person in the organization can ask themselves before they accept a new piece of work. New piece of work, to think, does this really fit with what we're trying to do? And I think what it does is it allows people, particularly where you have large teams working remotely and working with other partners, to navigate for themselves what work is useful to the organization and what's not. It works really well with funding organizations as well,

and then just a couple more that I think might be particularly useful. We've got in here something around planning, and I think that's relevant for the

concept of a strategic plan and an operational plan. So planning is a basic management function involving formulation of one or more detailed plans to achieve optimum balance of needs or demands with the available resources, which is well, well, catchy, yeah, right, pretty distinctive, isn't it? It's kind of economic, isn't it? You know, like, allocate those scarce resources to meet your optimized utilities. Absolutely management theory at its best, trying to over complicate what planning does. And I think the way we always talk about it in the organization is just like we talked about the difference between the levels of strategy or operational management and strategic management. We have a strategic plan and an operational plan. The strategic plan will be longer term, and it will be about how what are we going to do? What's our mission, what we're going to do to get further the idea of the vision and some of the tactics that we're going to use, and the operational plan is a yearly thing, and we sit down and we go, right, what resources we got, and how are we going to prioritize? Yeah, it's more detailed, refined, yeah, and it's effectively a tool that allows us to get permission from our board to say, yes, you've understood the strategy correctly on the strategic plan, and we agree that the way you want to spend your money and spend your time reflects that will help you reach your goals, right? Yeah, and activate the strategic plan. Yeah. So that's the way we think about it, which I think is useful terminology, but I as again, I'm going to say it again, because I don't think can be said enough. I have been in businesses, and I have been in organizations that would disagree and swap those terms around and would use them differently. Ultimately, what matters is, do you understand what you're doing as a group? Yeah. And why? Yeah. So there's some terminology and definitions for you. Cool Jen, what about what about purpose statements? Did we touch on purpose statements? Okay, so that's really an.

Interesting. So purpose statements, I haven't come across as much, okay, but my understanding is that they're almost identical to a mission statement, yeah, but sometimes they overlap with visions, yeah, is that right? Well, I'd say it's basically the same as a mission I mean, I really think it is. I think it's just worth touching on both of them, because, well, certainly, at least in the UK, organizations often have a vision and a purpose, yeah. And in the US, they often have a vision and a mission. But I really think the missions and the vision, I say missions and purposes, that's really interesting. I wonder if there's a differential between nonprofits than in corporates, because in Britain, charities will often have a vision and a mission rather than a purpose, yeah. And I guess it's partly because mission is has in its heritage. And non missions go back to Mission statements and the missionaries, it was a, you know, an organization would have a wider concept of how they wanted the world to be in, and they would send specific missions, yeah, to achieve that. So, so maybe there's something in that. Maybe it's just your organizations I've worked with, yeah? So I think we're saying they're basically the same thing, yeah, and we probably, actually, it's probably a really good point, because we will probably interchange mission and purpose through this conversation.

Cool. Okay, so do you want to take us through your research, the wonderful world of management? Yeah, lucky us. Lucky. I have opinions about management

theory, but Okay, cool. So let's go straight into the research, round up with a little bit of management theory, and see what we get to so we're going to start off by having a little bit of a reflection on how visions and missions relate to strategy. And obviously we've spoken a lot about strategy earlier, but you know, how exactly do these fit together, and how does it fit within that process? And all I'm going to do is run through quickly two different sort of high level strategic processes, or strategic models that people use in different environments, just so you can see the role of visions and missions in them. The first thing I'm going to touch on is something called vimosa, VM, O, S, A, the most project, or sometimes, tell me that's a cocktail. It sounds like it doesn't it vodka martini. I don't know what else all the other ones are.

So, yeah. So sometimes it's also called the most VM, O, S, T, and, like a lot of these things, it's just the first letters of the different words that are in here. So vamosa stands for vision, mission, objectives, strategies and action plans for most or when it's the most VM OST, it is vision, mission, objectives, strategies and tactics. And really all this is is it's a framework that lets you delve down sort of the ladder of detail and specificity around what you're doing. And it's a, it's a way to build out how you run your business. So at the very first level, you should have your vision, right? So you should have in your mind as an organization where you're trying to get to what that future state is that you want to create. So you get that, and then once you have that, you get a sense of, Well, if that's your vision, what's your mission? So you know the way you want the world to be, the mission then becomes, well, what is our role in this? What is it that we do that will help us achieve that vision? So you've delved down a level and got your your mission, then once you've got your vision and your mission, you delve down another level and say, Okay, well, we've got our vision, we've got our mission. What are our specific objectives? What are some specific goals and sort of targets that we want to have that if we meet these objectives, we will feel that we're on the path of our mission and we're close to or contributing to achieving our vision. So vision, mission objectives. And then once you've got those objectives, this is where some of the language is a bit confusing. Then it says, Okay, well, what are your strategies? So for each one of those objectives that you've laid out, what is your strategy to help you achieve that? And in some of the language that we used earlier, this is where people might be talking about some of a business strategy, as opposed to a corporate strategy. So how do we have a specific strategy that helps us tackle each of these objectives? And we'd have different strategies for our different objectives. Then, once you've got your strategies, the next stage here is the A over T, and for most, over most, and A is for action plans, and T is for tactics. And in some ways, it's kind of similar, but it says now that you've got your strategy to meet your objective, what are the actions that you need to take, or what are the specific lower level tactical activities that you need to take as part of your desire to implement that strategy? So really, this is just a layered level of detail. And the key message here, in terms of vision and mission and purpose statements, is start with a vision, delve down a level to work out your mission, and from there, delve down layer by layer to add at each stage a bit more clarity around what you want to achieve and how you're going to do it, so that, you know, in a nutshell, that's for most server, most framework. But you know, the key point is, it starts with a vision and mission, and you need to have that visibility and view of what you're trying to do. So that's model one to consider. The next model I want to touch on is. Is known as the strategic management framework.

And again, it's just a way of conceptualizing broadly what I talk about as a strategy cycle. And a lot of industries and organizations run strategy in a cyclical basis. Basically, you know, at a really high level, it's, let's analyze what's going on. Let's figure out what we want to do based on what's going on. Let's create some projects, let's implement them, and then let's get to the end of that cycle, and then let's pause, stick our heads up, take a bit of breath, and then start again. So sometimes it's a three year cycle. Some people run an annual strategy cycle. You know, all that sort of differentiation is in there, but fundamentally, it's a cyclical process, and the strategic management framework helps encapsulate that. So the Strategic Management Framework has at the very top of it, going across everything, and you can see this online.

It has the vision and purpose. So the key message here is that your vision and purpose is consistent, and it's the top level thing that you think about within your organization when you're thinking about strategy. Then if you go down a little bit beneath your vision and purpose, the Strategic Management Framework breaks out effectively two repeated process processes. The first is the formulation of strategy. So stage one in your strategic management framework is to formulate your strategy, and then stage two is to implement it. And your strategy cycle is as follows, formulate, implement assess, formulate implement assess, formulate implement assess. I could do that for quite a while, right? But essentially, wish people would rather than just stopping after the first one, right? Because, yeah, yeah. So, so that's the sort of iterative process. So let's look a little bit more at what we mean and what's involved in formulation and what's involved in implementation.

So formulation, what's in there? So for first thing around formulation, once you have your vision and purpose is to really understand and do some analysis. So for analysis, you want to understand yourself as an organization. So what are we who's there? What are our capabilities? What are the skills that we have? You also want to assess your industry. So what's going on in your industry, what are maybe some of the technologies, what's the competitive landscape, what are expected changes, what's labor policy, what's regulation, you know, things like that. And what do you see coming in the future? And then you want to look a little bit more broadly. So you want to look at your external environment. So you want to say, you know, what's your global political environment, what's the impact of,

you know, the broader economy, what environment doing? What's your legal structure, all your pestle or pest type things might fall into that.

So you analyze, and you're aware of yourself, and more broadly, the wider world, at different levels. And then, knowing that wider piece, stage two of formulation is strategy formation. So to do this, you need to assess that external piece. You need to then think about your opportunities risks, and do some scenario planning based on your internal assessment and the environment that you've assessed. And then with that, you need to make some decisions. So you need to decide knowing what you know about yourself and the wider world and your view of a future. What is your competitive advantage? What do you want to do with your portfolio of businesses, if you are multi business, a multi business group or company, what about your geographic scope? What markets do you want to be in geographically? What's your market position that you want to adopt for your products or for your portfolios. And then maybe you want to go back and look at analyzing the value chain with you in your industry, looking at your core competencies, sorry, value chain within your organization. Maybe look at your core competencies and use that to really decide what your positioning is going to be and what your you're going to do as a business. And then the last stage of formulation is having decided based on your analysis of a wider world, what you're going to do. You then need to set goals and really prepare yourself so that you know where you're heading specifically in relation to your strategy. So here you need to bring in some policies and procedures to help control that. But really key at this stage is you need to look at KPIs, your key performance indicators, or maybe your OKRs, depending on the language you use. So that's your objectives and key results. And you need to make sure that these measures of success are done at a corporate level, maybe at a functional level, at a business unit level, and make sure that these are a good set of indicators for your success in your aspirational goals towards reaching your objectives

and your outcomes that you're aiming for your business to get to. So you need that piece of goal setting. And then once you've got those more

business oriented KPIs, you then need to translate those into goals for individuals. So you take your corporate

KPIs, OKRs, and then you build them into measures for potentially business units, but certainly at an individual or leadership level. You start to allocate accountabilities to people and say, these are some targets. This is what your scorecard is going to look like as a business. This is what good looks like. And that whole process encapsulates for.

Formulation. So again, formulation is analyzing yourself in the environment, using that analysis to come up with a decision around what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, and then setting some goals so you know how far you're going to go and where you want to go. So that's formulation. And I would probably just flag up there that that is probably the best explanation of why vision and mission does matter, yeah, because if you get that first bit wrong, pretty much everything you're then going to decide to do is going to not be fearful, yeah, yeah. You know your vision and your purpose override all of this. It's so funny listening to you talk, and I was thinking, Oh, does it matter? And I know we're going to talk about that later. And does it matter that maybe it doesn't. Waver around. Course it matters. Because ultimately, if you don't really understand what you're trying to do, and this is particularly true where your nonprofit is not the primary objective, it's just you're guessing. You're just guessing about what you're doing. Yeah, you just don't have any clarity. You don't have a concise direction. When you're one garden, if you, if you can't articulate, yeah, as a CEO, what you're trying to achieve and what your organization is hopefully trying to get behind, you've got no chance of getting everyone else behind. Yeah, yeah, you can make decisions. So that's formulation. And then we get on to implementation, which is the second part of a strategic management framework and implementations in two different stages. So the first part of an implementation is around making sure that you've got the right structure through which to deliver. So here it's around making sure you've got an organizational structure that aligns to it, making sure you've got the right leadership. Then another structural piece is around what is your

initiative structure and program. So strategies are almost always delivered through a portfolio of initiatives, a program of work that help you achieve your strategic goals. So from a structural perspective, do you have the right initiatives? Do you have the right program? Do you have a governance structures and all of that? And then structurally in terms of the shape of your business, do you have the right businesses in there? So is your portfolio correct? Let's restructure that. Do you need to make acquisitions? Do you need to dispose to make sure that the portfolio of business units that you have, or companies or brands that you have really fits with your analysis of a market, the strategy you've set and the goals that you're trying to get to? So so that structure piece is around getting all the pieces on the board in the right way, so that you're in a position to use those pieces to achieve your goals. And then there's a piece around, well, let's actually do it and go out and launch over projects and start to deliver and all of that stuff. And the second half of the implementation, part of a strategic management framework is control and feedback. And this is an all too important piece of of any business. This is the kind of nuts and bolts of it. So in here, you need to have your budgets, you need to have your targets, you need to have your financial plans. You need to have, you know, your forecasted KPIs. You need to have your head count targets. You need to have your sales targets, all that kind of stuff's in there. And you need to track against it to see if you are moving in the direction that you want to move in

so that if you are you can celebrate that great. If you're not, then you can take corrective action, but you need to have that control in there and that feedback so that you can make those decisions. And that's I cannot stress enough to those of you working in organizations where profits not the primary purpose, how important that is. So the one of the single biggest challenges in nonprofits is mission creep. And you see in corporates too, but it's, you know, it's trying to achieve your vision and all of your vision single handedly, rather than identifying clearly what you as an organization are going to try and do and then sticking to it. And I think it's really, really important to understand those steps beyond vision and mission. Otherwise, what you end up with is a group of people going out and trying to do everything, yeah, just doesn't work. Yeah, I think that's right. And it's important in corporates as well, right? I mean, it's, it is important everywhere. The last piece I touch on for implementation phase. For this implementation phase is about making sure that you've got an incentive structure and you track against it. So, you know, quite often there are performance related pay or options or things like that, and you just need to control those and make sure that you're managing those effectively. So when you've created measures and scorecards for individuals or leaders or business units, those then translate into your incentive structure, and you need to make sure that you're controlling and using that properly. Yeah, this is probably my biggest both frustration and advice to people around this stuff, which is, don't accidentally gamify the system. Don't act. And what I mean by that is, don't accidentally put into place rewards and targets that

when it turns out they're not the right ones. But you've really kind of encouraged people to go for them to understand that people might change their behavior and created create inadvertent issues. Yeah. So the most practical example I can give of this is, you know, you say to people, right? We want the customer service. You know, you're going to be rewarded for the speed at which.

Can shut down a conversation, yeah, when you phone into a call center, because we will equate the speed that you've shut it down with the speed that you are with the speed of resolution, the most practical example I can give you. So I phoned in the utility company the other day, and eventually they just hung up on me because they realized that I wasn't a customer on their books, but they had accidentally switched my my supply. Yeah? And you could, you could feel them sweating because they I've been on the phone with him for an hour and a half, yeah? And eventually, you know, you I just got cut off, yeah? And

that guy, it's not that guy's fault, that there is a process that is bad that doesn't explain me to do. It's not his fault, but he will then average, and it's because it's an average, right? You know, they'll have worked it out. But it's, you know, the average amount of time, rather than how many calls over 10 minutes or whatever are allowing them. So I would just urge HR professionals to really understand metrics and how metrics can work and and when you're looking at that feedback, understand what's going on. So when you think you're reducing the numbers and way, that's brilliant, everyone's happy. And actually you've got a load of disgruntled customers, yeah, who feel like they've been cut off quickly, yeah? And they've been overly pushed to resolve. Yeah, I've got, I've got two, really, I think, good examples of that, but I'll touch on quickly now. One is around

wait time for appointments, and appointments met at GPS. So there are targets around how many people are met at the time that they've specified, and what that resulted in in in general practitioner medical practices in the UK, in lots of instances, is that you can only book an appointment for the day that you're you're firming up, right? So you can't forward book, because if you forward book, chances are that you or there's a higher probability that you won't be able to make it, and that'll affect KPIs and metrics. So you only let people have appointments on the day, which is a dreadful outcome for individuals, but helps people meet targets and is a dreadful outcome for GP.

They're always seeing people when there's biggest issue, yeah, rather than people managing conditions, yeah, yeah. And actually, it's interesting that I think there seems to be some kickback around that, and they seem to be resolved, yeah? Because definitely practices are changing now, yeah. And it's crazy. And the other one I'm going to touch on is maybe more of a corporate one, which is return on capital employed, right? So, you know, your capital is for stuff that you're using for your business, and your return is basically the income that you take off it, right? And capital is a fixed thing, which you measure, you know, throughout the year, but it's kind of a point in time thing. And your income is an accumulation over over time. And you know, you know, you want to get a great return on capital employed. And there are two ways to do that. One is to increase your return, and two is to reduce the capital that you have, you know. So all you need to do to get a great return on capital employed is just sell everything, sell all your assets. You've got no capital. You've had a great return throughout the year, and suddenly you've got a skyrocketing return on capital. And that is a great example of where the the

structure of the organization and the people who own it come into play for strategies, which is unfortunate but true. And I know we're going to talk on, we're going to touch on that and a new podcast as always,

but it's enormously frustrating, and a lot of that comes from either a vision or a mission that isn't clear enough, and then some always lost. Yeah, people have ended up at KPIs, and they've ended up at targets, and they are so disassociated from what the original mission is that quite often they're conscious, yeah, yeah, that's right. But, you know, it's never the workers fault. If an organization is saying, This is what we goal posts are over there. Then you go from, and I think that's when, when particularly senior leaders misunderstand how powerful HR and goal setting and management is.

Hugely frustrating. Anyway, cool. So that's a bit on vision visions, a bit on visions and missions and where they fit in the strategy process. And you know, the key call out is their very, very first bit on which the rest of your strategies built. Really get them right early on Marshmallow and you are going there, yeah, unless you've got lots of spaghetti to build it up into a team building activity. Anyway. So next point do we want to touch on what makes good vision and mission statement? Yeah, I think really useful. We've just come up with a few things that we think really help when you're thinking about your statements.

So visions be future focused. I talked about, you know, that concept of drawing a picture of the future, clear, directional, unique in the sense that it needs to feel different to engage with

aspirational, inspiring, vivid, relevant. We talked earlier about how they can be somehow less pinned down, able, yeah, it's okay for a vision to be a little bit a little bit more creative about where they're seeing the future. Slightly esoteric, a little bit yeah, yes. Um, versus missions, which, uh, generally. I. Ideally brief, but need to be specific, specific, yeah, and substantive,

again, unique, but versus the aspirations of a vision, they should be achievable. They should be focused, they should be motivational. They should last. They should be future proofed, yeah, years time. Yeah, you should still be able to stand by your mission. Yeah. And I think they need to be memorable, because I think of all of the things, that mission, that mission, that mission or purpose, it's the bit you really need everyone to remember when they're going around their day to day life in your organization, yeah, yeah. So, so for me, we've all that like revision. It's your effort to kind of see into the future and sculpt that definition of a future in a way that helps everybody want to get there. You know, it's kind of motivational. And I think that's great. It is great. We will talk about how people can go a bit wrong with that. Yeah, you can, you can get a little but, yeah, I think, I think you can do very little harm if you get a really simple, bold statement for your vision as a future and a really clear,

motivational and achievable statement for your mission, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of simple, isn't it? When we break it down, it's kind of some simple You and I both know how hard it is as I think, yeah, craft something that's theory versus practice. Yeah,

all right, cool. So that's what good looks like, we think for visions and missions. What about who we think needs visions, you know, and what levels they should be at. Have you got any thoughts on who should have them? I do. James. I've always got thoughts. Yeah, I think one of the questions

so you asked me a question during my during our briefing notes, for those who don't know, James has these amazing briefing notes for me that helped me structure how I'm thinking about stuff for me to preparing for it. So most of the most of the research stuff is all from him. And your question, I'm going to read it out exactly. It says at the bottom is side discussion. Are they just bollocks, right? And I think it's really important to understand what I'm about to say in the context that when, when I read, I was thinking about, who needs a vision. I After that, I was like, actually, do you know what? No one, it's a nonsense. And I disappeared down a bit of a wormhole of, why do we do this? And then there was interesting that, of all the people to spot this, I thought, You who doesn't predominantly work in the charity sector. Your point was that charitable third sector and social groups really benefit from them, because what they're trying to achieve is not necessarily as simple as profit. Yeah, and, and as soon as I read that, I got myself back in my box, and I remembered all of the stuff that I've done with all of the teams that I've worked and we might not have called the missions or visions or purposes, and sometimes we didn't, sometimes we didn't, but a shared understanding of the world we wanted to move towards, yeah, and a shared understanding of how we, in our small way or big way, depending on how big an organization we were, were going to help that happen that matters, And it matters particularly to the people doing it, because quite often it is the motivation that keeps them in that organization. Quite often, beyond everything, it's about purpose for them. And you know, and so for me, I went from no one needs them to everyone needs them very, very quickly, because that sector needs them, because they have to have them. But also, I think, in a world where profit can become king in the corporate it's really important, I think, to stick to your lane or be deliberate about the lane you're choosing. I use Lane quite a lot in terms of swimming lanes or running lanes, because it's just an easy way for me to understand, but we talk about it a lot, and staying focused and having laser focus and what you're doing. What you're doing. And I think when you're a corporate, it is really easy to see profitable places. And you know what? If that's your if that's your vision, the organization that makes the most money in the world, great, go for it, and then do whatever you need to do to make make money. Yeah, but if you are trying to be more deliberate about

the industry you're in, then I think you need it, because you need to give people an opportunity to understand what they should spend their time doing in order to meet the ambitions of the organization. So if you're aiming to be the most profitable footwear company, and you are going to do that by

the cheapest raw materials, then great. Everyone knows that, and that's what they're trying to do, and that's where they're going to focus on because and then comes back some critical thinking stuff that I read quite a lot, which is about the idea that if you get everyone, lots of different brains, thinking in the same direction, then you have a really good opportunity to move them all very, very quickly. And I think that's what good shared visions and missions do. It allows you to concentrate very quickly and get competitive advantage in one particular area, because chances are no one else is thinking that concertedly about that single lane. Yeah, about focus and I, and for me, I also think they really matter for creating a culture where people believe and understand each other's roles. Because if you can really.

Relate your role to the vision and the mission. Whatever organization you work in, jobs are good, because then everyone knows that everyone's contributing. Yeah, so I got a question for you on we'll come back a little bit to who need to but who were they for? Then, you know, based on our best conversation, who are they for? So we had this row, right? And I'm sure you've had this, are they external or internal documents, and are you doing them for internal or external reasons? And I think who they should be for and who they are actually for it to very differently. Okay, from my perspective, I don't know if you see this the same way. So quite often i i find that leadership teams want me to help them work on visions and missions in order to demonstrate something externally, to funders, to shareholders, to stakeholders, to the industry, to say this is who we are. And my frustration is that I think they are most successful and most impactful internally, on a shared understanding of boards of companies in the sense of the if you're working in a group, I think they're really helpful for managers and employees to create a common language, and I think they help make internal operational plans. But I think how they get used is glossy statements to share with the world, and they become advertising and marketing. And I think that's where it goes wrong. I don't think your vision has to be anything to do with your marketing plans. It can be great if it happens to be a great one, but that's not why you create them. And I think too often, I've sat in meetings where people are thinking about their mission and going, how is it going to play with the public? And I'm like, I'm not sure that's what you should be worried about. I think you should be worried about, how is it going to help you do what you're trying to do? Yeah, okay, so there's something about the ordering around, how you think about the users, if you mentioned Yeah, but I have a massive bug bear about how comms and advertising and marketing tends to drive agendas anyway, within particularly within nonprofits, when actually they're meant to be engaging and campaigning. So what about individuals?

Do you have a I'd be such a hypocrite to sound to know, having just told you at the beginning of this podcast that it really helped give me some clarity about my own personal vision and my ability to impact change, it would be, I would be hypocritical,

the height of hypocrisy to say, No, I don't think we should have them. Okay, however, like values we talked about a few episodes ago about values. I think it's really important to understand that personal visions and corporate visions don't have to match, yeah, and you can work really effectively in an organization and still have a very different purpose and vision, absolutely, yeah, but I think everyone should have one actually. It's a good yeah, it's good. You don't have to write it up and put it on your wall, and you certainly don't have to get it on the letterhead, yeah, and you don't need to build it into objectives and strategies run a Facebook campaign based on it, yeah, well, unless you're trying to make new friends. But I think understanding your purpose at any given time is helpful. And I think understanding what your current mission,

your medium to long term approach to achieving that vision is a really nice thing. I wouldn't ever use that language, though. Personally, I think a lot of people do this stuff without using that language. It's just interesting. But, you know, for me, I think people do kind of have a vision of a future, and that's kind of like their values. You know, we talked about terminal values being an end state, yeah. So maybe there's a bit around that personal crossover. And I think some people in some areas of sort of management and personal development to speak, will use languages. Will use language like personal vision, personal mission. Um, so it's out there, and the processes around it are similar to around the corporate stuff. I think absolutely, I, I'll be completely frank with you, unless I become an astronaut and go to Mars, I'm not calling anything a mission for myself. Yeah, I feel, I feel it's quite zealots. Yeah, it is which I'm not necessarily that comfortable, but that's a super personal thing. And I if you, if you are great, I guess it's just a really personal thing that I'd not, I'm not partially because I just don't think I'm that special, yeah, special to me. And I have plans, dreams and hopes, but I struggle with mission because I just think it's geographical, like, I can't like, I'm like, I just can't disassociate it from trying to get to a different country or a different place. Mission, impossible, yeah, like a film, right? Or just maybe that works, right? Because ultimately, we are all the heroes or heroines of all of our films. So maybe we're all Tom Cruise, just trying to I certainly am, for those of you who are watching this podcast, I'm sure you'll all see exactly how Tom Cruise. I am right, right, absolutely. We'll put some photos up. Honestly, it's like, it's like, I'm sitting in a room with them. There's a reason that podcasting is a medium of choice. Okay, so I didn't have to do my hair anyway. So

that's a little bit around who needs a vision. So we kind of think companies, charities, you know, maybe even social groups, individuals. One other thing I call out is that at a large level, you touched on it earlier, people need to be able to connect with a vision. So sometimes, if you've got a corporate vision for a large group, you need to have maybe a divisional vision that aligns to your corporate vision to see.

Be. You know, if your corporate vision is to be the world's best supplier of cars, then maybe one of your divisions is finance, or, yeah, maybe finance. But I was gonna say, from an operational perspective, maybe you want to have a division that provides the best cars geographically in North America, or something like that, and then people can see how their little bit fits into the bigger vision. And the caveat I would make to all of that is that someone needs to be sense checking they all fit. Yeah? Because I have been in a scenario where a team has come up with their own vision and mission, and someone shared it with me, and I was like, who checked this? Yeah, it's not just suddenly realized they've gone off and done their own thing and they they're like, no, no, we don't want the organization to do this. And it's particularly common in charities who refine their purpose so they they pull back from mission creep, they stretch down and they say, right, this is what we're going to do. And there's a team somewhere that goes, No, I'm not happy with that creek, right? Exactly. And that's why it creeps, yeah, and that's the irony. It creeps because people are passionate about it. Okay, so question on this, and we've kind of touched on it, and I used for phrase, bollocks. Are they just bollocks? We could translate well, it's a British thing. I think they probably do. But are they just garbage? Are they just rubbish? Are they just kind of made up of what sort of view I mean, you've kind of oscillated around on it? Yeah, I flip flop, and I think that anything that can be created into a service or a consultancy tends to get over complicated because people feel they need to justify something more complicated than it is. Yeah, I think where you have organizations who aren't honest about what they do, which might just be purely to make money, yeah, it's very hard for them to admit that. So therefore they create a nonsense, but if it's done well, and if it's done right, and

I think you we were talking just before we came on, and I think you made a really good point, which I'm going to steal, which is this idea that

quite often the really great visions and missions have not been crafted deliberately to be visions and missions. They have been a genuine statement from a founder from a small organization, saying, This is who we are and what we want to do. And then over time, they've been in the same way as great brands. Actually, they evolved and you know, and then actually, you see, you know, Apple always amazes me. Of their brand has changed so little and yet so much. Yeah, ultimately, at its core, it stayed exactly the same all the way through, and their look and feel has as well. And I think really good missions and visions stand the test of time because they're really clear and simple. Yeah?

So yeah. I mean, it's hard. I've written a few. I've not been happy with some of the ones I've written. And I've also got a sense having helped organizations along the way where they've been writing one that they don't really understand why they're doing it, what they're doing it, and they think it goes on top of funding document. And that worries me, yeah, because it suggests to me they don't really understand why the organization exists. Yeah, I think that's fair. So I think it takes a great deal of self awareness of an organization to do it properly. And I think organizations without them, struggle, yeah, but I don't think they struggle because they don't have a vision and mission. I think they struggle because they don't know what the vision and mission or similar statement is, yeah. I think there's some really interesting stuff in this, and I think I think you've alluded to a lot of it, though. So something that strikes me as we were talking a little bit about that earlier

point that you raised is in terms of who are they for? I guess for me, part of part of whether or not they're a rubbish thing, is around who they've been created for, right? So if you've created one purely as a marketing exercise, and if that's your primary driver for the creation of it, then for me, that's a bad thing, and that means it probably is a bit of a rubbish thing, because it's not really reflecting what you're trying to do. And then I've been toying with another idea, which

you know people know about, like green washing and impact washing. When you try and clean up the image of your organization, I think that from a corporate social responsibility lens and things like that. People may look to use their vision and mission statements as a way to wash their organizational reputation. And I think if that's one of your drivers as well, then it becomes bollocks, and it sort of demeans the purpose of it. And I think if those are some of the motivations for creating your vision and mission then they probably are rubbish, and you should probably be wary about them, and they might feel disingenuous to your other stakeholders. And if that's the case, then they probably aren't really worth, worth focusing on. But I think if they're done well and for the right reasons, and if they're genuinely believed in by the people sculpting them, then I think they're good things. And I think so

the I guess the word that I didn't use earlier, when you asked me what makes a good one. And it's kind of implied, but it's not made as they need to be honest. Yeah, they really need to be honest. If your purpose as an organization is to make as much money as possible in the footwear industry, say it, yeah. Just say it and then tell us about.

Access you're going to use and if that, but the probe, the problem is that so much of value is an authentic branding that they can't afford. So their branding department will be sitting there banging going, you can't say that, because so much of what we are selling is a lifestyle,

is a construct of how we view the world and who we're aligning ourselves to. And the bottom line is that 17 year old cool kids on the streets of London do not want to buy a product from someone who has openly admitted that they're trying to make as much money as possible out of them. It's just not going to happen. And then that's where the cycle comes in. Yeah, and this conversation could go into all kinds of interesting places. And I'm just going to check out one other thing that I think is interesting is a concept around this. So we've talked about the fact that, you know, all successful organizations are pretty good at coming up with visions and missions, but we know that causation and correlation aren't necessarily the same, so I think that's just something to bear in mind, you know. Or maybe you can be successful without one. I'm not really sure that you can, but it's just something to think about it. You know, it could be the case that, you know, people who are good at coming up with visions and missions as organizations also happen to just correlate with the type of people who can run a really good business, right? So there's maybe a bit of a disconnect, I'm not entirely sure Well, and I would argue, what is a good business anyway? I suspect there's people out there who would define a good business as having a good vision and mission, yeah, and making money. And I think generally,

we're not very honest about what makes good and how, why people are making money. You know, there's, there's a couple of very large tech companies around at the moment that people will tell you they are brilliant and they have great cultures. I will tell you they're a monopoly, yeah, and that's why they're making money. And they've, they've used their monopoly advantage. There are plenty of companies that, you know,

supposedly are brilliant and ethical, but actually what they do is they use their losses in one company to quickly build up capital, and then they can, don't have to pay any tax, and then they move into the next country, and they offset that. So, you know, this really is a different podcast, yeah. Sorry, but it all comes back to they claim to be wonderful all about this accuracy and integrity of a vision, and it's not, and it really undermines everything they do. Because if you are working for that company, do you really believe it? Yep, yep. So it's about the honesty, right? And you know, that's wherever world of advertising and marketing and branding comes in and all that kind of you can you can tell they're not my favorites, right? Yeah. So, yeah, it's all good, all right. So, so we've talked there about some of the integrity and how it feels and who it's for. Do you want to maybe pick up some examples that we think are good? I mean, you talked there about, if you say you're ethical and all that, but you're not really, then it translates into your behavior. Okay? So I, I James has picked out some of these. And there's one that I particularly know so interestingly, the two that I mentioned that I couldn't remember what their purpose was exactly, word for word of his vision to mission. These are ones, vision. Ones, I think a mission. I think Jr one's mission.

But interestingly, they're the companies that I thought of even before I knew what the words were and looked at the rest, I Googled, and I found that these are companies that I knew I'd read and I'd thought, oh, that that that absolutely pins it. And one is a commercial company, and one is not, sorry, one is a shareholder company. In fact, no, I think they're both privately owned, which might explain possibly so one is IKEA, and it's IKEA is private, yeah, of course it is. So this is hilarious, so ironically, I do wonder if you could find some correlation between shareholders industries and the honesty of statements. Yeah, so IKEA say that their vision is to create a better everyday life for many people. So why do you like that? Okay, so firstly, I love the Scandic many people, not everyone. Yeah, they're not even pretending it's everyone, but they're being honest, because they do reach many people. I mean, it's insane how many people they want me. And you know what? They make my life every day better. I really don't want them to, but they do, because I know that there are all sorts of things I don't necessarily 100% agree with, yeah, like the disposable nature of some of their friends, but there are things that bring me joy on a daily basis, from Ikea, yeah, and there are, and generally, day to day, they feature in my life. So it's honest, it's,

it's relatively general, which I think we said round visions is okay, yeah. And it's just very Scandic, isn't it, you know? So that's why I love 810 words in there. I haven't counted it, but yeah. And the other one I love, which I'm going to ask you to read out Yeah, for you, is one that I read when I was doing helping someone prepare for a job. Yeah? And I just fell in love with it because, and it's interesting, it's because it aligns with everything I believe in, which is John Lewis, yeah, yeah, journalists and partners, as they are now know, because rebranded. So you read this out when we were doing our prep, because it was really important for you. So their vision, or maybe their mission, is the happiness of all our members. They're a membership organization, so sort of like a cooperative, so their employees are their members.

Yeah. So important partners, yeah. So I'll start again. So the happiness of all our members through their worthwhile employment in a successful business,

I just love it. It makes me so happy. The understanding that having a successful business creates happiness in the people it works for allows them to both be profitable and recognize that that's important, and there's no point working. There's no point running a cooperative that doesn't successful, that's crazy and doesn't make money, but that they're doing it for the people who own the business and work in it. Yeah, and I just think that's really honest, it's really specific, and I think the world would be a better place if organizations focused on being successful so that the people who worked for them and worked in them and owned them were happier. Yeah? I just, I think it's really, really to the point, yeah, agreed, even though they don't say anything about homeware. And let's face it, we all get jobs for homework. Yeah, in Britain, well, yeah,

all right. So so that's two two examples, though. So really, we're kind of into the list of the week stage now, so let's sort of recap a little bit, and say top three visions and top three purposes, and we'll share those as well as for weeks. That sounds good. Do you want to lead off on some of those we've already Yeah. So we've talked about IKEA without question. That is my number one vision. Yeah. And you've given a really great example from the world of non profit, which is Alzheimer's Association, which is a world without Alzheimer's disease hits every single thing that we talked about in good visions, a vision of a future. It's aspirational, and they will, then, I assume, go on and define what their role in that will be, which I think is fabulous. And then the third one you've got on here, which is a brand I adore, is Patagonia. Build the best product. Cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. And my guess is they're privately out. I don't know if they are now, but they could be, I don't know definitely were, yeah, and I think they are really, really true to that. They are very articulate about the environmental crisis, and particularly in South America, where they're based and do you want to take us through three of the purposes? Yeah, three purposes. So I picked up three purposes that I thought were nice. So one is for the Khan Academy. I don't know if people know this. It's an online learning platform, and their purpose is to provide a free world class education to anyone anywhere.

Might be my new favorite. It's just what it says on what it says, right? I mean, there's nothing ambiguous about it. There's nothing overblown. It's just simple, and it says all the things they are. I mean, it's an it's a free platform, it's online. It's really good, so world class is good. It's education. It's open to anyone, anywhere, and they don't put brackets, provided they have access to the internet in a computer or whatever. But, you know, that's pretty good. So I like that. Ben and Jerry's I put on just because I thought it was kind of

nice. So their purpose is making the best possible ice cream in the nicest possible way. And again, I like it because of a simplicity to it, right? It's just kind of simple. And then I also put on the BBC, because I like this as well. That's British Broadcasting Corporation, and they their their purpose is to enrich people's lives with programs and services that inform, educate and entertain.

No, I love about all three of them. I was just flicking through in my head all the different roles that I could have in those in those organizations. Yeah, I can't imagine a role where I wouldn't understand what I could do to help. Yeah, great somewhere. Yeah, particularly Ben and Jerry's. I mean, you know, it's basically, it's saying you want to come and work with us. Be a nice person, yeah, be nice. We're not interested in you. Yeah, yeah, don't be a jerk, right? Rule number one on hiring, wow, it's great, isn't it? There's a great, there's a great piece in a

book by James Kerr called legends about All Blacks. That's about exactly that rule we were thinking a little bit earlier about, you know, the roles of visions and these. This is a great, I think list is exemplifying some of those. So these are some good ones. Have you got any thoughts on what makes bad ones?

Have I got thoughts? I got one big one, which is, so I know what we do, don't we? This is why we talk for hours. But I the single one that frustrates me the most is lots, lots of ways this can go wrong. Dishonesty probably being the one that's most obvious from what we've talked about. But there is one but there is one that drives me insane, and it's grandiose statements. Okay, it's, it's products that have absolutely no impact really, on what they're trying to claim that they want to create in the future and suddenly want to change the world. And I can't, I there's one, yeah, and I think it was, was it Starbucks? Oh, Starbucks. I can't remember. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something along, we're gonna, we're gonna change the world. Yeah, he'll one neighborhood at a time. Yeah. I was just like, You know what? That's not what I want from Starbucks. Like, I.

In there. More importantly, it's not what I sense, what they want when I go in there. No, do you know what I mean if I, if I, if they genuinely did that and I went in and I felt they were trying to make world a better place, I'd kind of be okay. They try and make me laugh, which I quite like, and that would be much more honest. So generally, grandiose statements, really? Yeah, so it's funny. You said I scribbled one down that I kind of don't like and for a similar reason, which is, this is actually coke. So apologies if we've got any coke employees here.

Their vision is, or maybe, I guess, this is their mission, sorry, to refresh for world in mind, body and spirit, to inspire moments of optimism and happiness through our brands and actions. Now, for me,

I don't think about genuine and I also think it's kind of self indulgent and grandiose. That's hugely self indulgent. I mean, really, I do wonder. So you've, you've hit on something really interesting, which is, I wonder whether I struggle with it because I'm not, because I'm British, and we're just not into that kind of statement, because a lot of the statements that I struggle with are not British, and they're from this very sort of verbose, sort of dreamy corporate world, which is very much that I expect to come out of, like the American dream. Maybe, possibly it's a nonsense, though. Coke doesn't do that coke does do, but

their purpose isn't to refresh the world, right? I mean, or if it is, then there's some other bits in there, profitability and distribution and, you know, yeah, be much more honest to say we want to put a tinnit Coke in the hand of everybody that wants one, totally because, let's be honest, a heavily sugared and caffeinated product is not going to refresh your mind or body or spirit. Really. Might give me a massive sugar it might give you, yeah, exactly I like, I like Coke as a product. I just think it's disconnected from from there, we'll keep you awake when you need it, yeah, keep you focused, exactly right? But it's not gonna refresh, no. And I do, I think, I think that's, that's, you know, in a room getting over excited, yeah, and they've got a portfolio brand and whatever, and that's fine, but that's not what it's about anyway. So we talked about grandiose or overly ambitious. There are a couple other ones that I think are some Watch out. So anything that contradicts itself or contradicts what it does, yeah, so to me, that actually kind of contradicts what it does, because they fundamentally sell a lot of fairly unhealthy products, and then they adopt the language of sort of healing, type of wonder if they'd be better off switching their pub. There's there's some really like, there's some really good examples of products that used to be considered day to day products, and now you can treat them as luxuries. And you know what? I'd be more like this buyer Coke, if they were really honest about the fact, you know, it's that post hangover. Yeah, you're struggling a bit, and it's really gonna pick me up. And why not, if you're gonna do it, do it COVID, go for the original Yeah. But I guess they've got a huge market share to protect, yeah, yeah, and a broad brand range, right? Yeah, makes it complicated. Um, and then the last one is vague, so I can't remember, we had an example of something that was really vague and I can't remember. It was something generally like, make good drinks for everyone. Yeah, yeah, to be an effective market leader in our operational target or whatever, something like that. Anyway, just don't be fair if it can apply to not just another company, but another sector you're probably shooting in the wrong hoop. Yeah. All right, so quick recap on list of a week. List of a week is top three visions, or three good visions and three good purposes. So we had IKEA to create a better everyday life for many people, the Alzheimer's Association a world without Alzheimer's and Patagonia to build the best product cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. So that's our three vision statements. And the three purpose statements were Khan Academy to provide a free world class education. 21 everywhere. I'm totally going to google them. Purpose Ben and Jerry's make the best possible ice cream in the nicest possible way, which I love, and the BBC to enrich people's lives with programming services that inform, educate and Sony in each of those, I think, really clear. Yeah, okay, great. All right. So

any quick stories from a keyboard? I've got one, yeah, and it's a comparison. One really tell you two very quickly. I've been involved in quite writing, quite a lot of strategies, strategic plans, visions, missions, etc. And I want to give you two contrasting experiences that I had. One and it comes back to this authenticity thing. One is where I watched an organization involve everybody in the development of their vision and mission,

and at every stage they would produce a slide at the end of those discussions that already had it pre written, yeah, in part, yeah. And it was, it was just horrific. And then the second did exactly the same process, but genuinely went away as a leadership team and discussed what everyone was saying. You know what's funny too. This is the story that I was going to talk about as well. So maybe, maybe, I think at some point we need to do an episode.

Around that process of crafting, revision statements and different ways to do it and how to do well. Anyway, go on. It's no, it's just, it's funny. It's the same thing. It's the most astonishing thing. When I I worked for this, I worked for two organizations, and I did, I was in the room helping craft it, and you just watch the the enthusiasm and the belief seek out the people. So firstly, it's completely,

shoot yourself in the foot. And secondly, you don't get a better statement. Yeah, you get what you think as a senior leadership or as a consultant you're getting, yeah, but even more than that, and even more damagingly, everybody feels that you've lied to them. Oh, You've tricked them. You've tricked me into contributing to your game because they want me to buy in. And I guess the reason I wanted to mention this, particularly around vision and mission, is it dirties it. It does higher it really does. It does because they look at you and they're like, that's not our mission. That's yours. And not only is it, not only is it yours and unclean, but you sullied me in the process of getting there. Yeah, you pretended you would bring me along the ride and then surprise back. So firstly, don't do it. And secondly, if you are going to do it, don't do it that badly. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, all right, so exactly the same. I've not done it at an organizational level, but I've done it

sort of functional levels within larger organizations. And again, we've done similar exercises. You know, you've got your vision in different ways, and we've seen exactly the same thing. You know, I work with leaders to come up with visions for very divisional areas. And some of them bring people together in a room and listen to them and value them,

and use that to co create meaningfully a vision and mission. And then, of course, you know, build out objectives and metrics and stuff. Some of them just do it and then say, and here's mine. And then it's all, and you all know which one's coming, yeah, and the other. The other flip side of a very similar situation is when everyone feeds in, and then a week later, someone sends out what it is, and you're like, how did that come out of the conversation? Yeah, yeah, it did. Came out of a beer afterwards with one of the leadership, yeah, yeah.

Cool. All right. Any final thoughts on this? We're kind of getting to the end of our time, probably just one for me around top tips, and it's my, what I call the mum test. Okay, so I have consistently asked my mum and my niece, my mum is of a certain age. She'd kill me, yeah,

not young, and my niece is 19, and consistently, I will ask them to check vision emissions and say, What do you take from it? What do you think it means? Fine, that's good. You can do a whole load of market research, but you know, your mum and your niece or nephews is probably just as good. It's a good percentage just, you know, when they spot the first not list or from each word spell something rude. Yeah, that happens.

Okay, I've got one tip as well, or maybe a reflection point. If you're in an organization and you're involved in doing this and you have a vision or mission statement, you should go around and speak to some people you know on the floor

without leading up to it in advance, without letting people know, and just ask them and say, hey, you know. So I just want to check in. Do you guys know what our vision and mission are? And it's really interesting to hear what you get back from people. You probably get people who haven't got a clue, and you probably get people who garble it, and you might get some people that know. But what I'd say is, if generally people don't know or can't get the nub of it really in their communications, then either it's not very good,

or it might be good, but it doesn't resonate with your people, or it's not been communicated. And all of those are three bad things, but just asking the question and speaking about it's useful, because it can help bring people together, but don't make it a quiz. No, I once was an organization and you got scored on it, and you had to pass, yeah? And I just remember thinking, wow, how to suck all the joy out of life? Yeah, it's a bit

computer like, freaking out. Yeah, okay, really good, really helpful there. So I guess that brings us towards the end of our time today. Yeah, kind of spread past today. And we've talked quite a lot. We've talked about some definitions. We've had that discussion. We've looked at some terminology. We moved on to a research round up, and particularly looked at value visions and missions and how they sit within management theory and within that strategic development process, and what good looks like. We had our favorites, our list of the week, our favorite. It's so obvious which ones we

like. But we also talked about where you can go wrong with them, evil, evil statements. Yeah, sorry about that. I went off on some mad round

I get about bad visions and missions and dishonesty in corporate life. We talked about some stories from our own experiences, which turned out to be pretty similar. Yeah, I gave you a couple of tips and reflections, and I guess it's now time for us to check out. So just a reminder, you can reach us on Twitter. Yeah, that's right, you can get us at the WoW podcast on Twitter. We we keep an eye on that, and you got any questions or anything you want to ask, any.

Suggestions for shows, check them in and definitely share any favorite vision. Yes, I'd love, I'd love some really bad ones, and some ways I like I want good ones, but um, why do we always end up asking for bad but definitely, we would love to hear from that. So

we'll look forward to seeing you on on Twitter and on our website. But until next time, have a great week. Yeah. Bye, everyone. Bye, Hi. Thanks