It’s taken at face value that mission-vision-values statements are worth doing. But talk to the 
rank-and-file and you’ll find that this artful prose and the beautiful posters that carry it 
have little impact on organizational performance. 

They may even have engendered a degree of cynicism. “Is that all our leaders did in that retreat?
They’re so out of touch. I bet they were playing golf rather than solving our problems.” 

Why do mission-vision-values statements typically fail to do much good? And what does it take 
to do them right? 

Mission

The typical mission statement: “To be a world-class supplier of IT products and services that 
help our clients make gobs of money.” 

What kind of reactions from staff might leaders be hoping for? “Gee, boss, I didn’t know that. 
I guess I’ll stop writing HR policies and get back to systems programming.” 

In fact, the typical mission statement does little more than state the obvious: We’re in the IT 
business. And that alone isn’t going to motivate anybody or tell them anything new. The problem 
with typical mission statements is that they define the business of the entire organization. 
Staff don’t relate to them because they’re too ethereal, vague and grandiose. (The one case 
where organization-level mission statements are worthwhile is to clarify the five roles of 
corporate IT vis-a-vis decentralized IT groups.) 

Effective mission statements define the business of each small group within the organization. 
They give people a clear understanding of their own purpose. For example, one group may sell 
applications to clients. Another may sell logical data modeling to applications developers. 
Still another group may sell infrastructure-based services (like applications hosting) to clients,
while a support group sells infrastructure engineering services (like upgrades and tuning) to 
the internal service operators. 

When missions are defined group by group, they focus staff on their respective customers (be 
they clients or internal) and their products. They build customer focus, entrepreneurship, 
empowerment, a sense of identity with end results and pride in the value of one’s work. They 
also enhance teamwork by defining internal customer-supplier relationships. 

Group-level mission statements (I call them “domains”) have some side benefits as well. They 
flush out gaps and overlaps, and help rationalize the structure. 

Here’s the problem: Defining group-level domains is hard work. 
First, leaders have to learn a common language for talking about domains—a framework of 
the various lines of business within organizations. 
Then, they apply that clear language to their organization chart, deconstructing it into 
the lines of business under each manager. In this process, they learn to think about what people
sell (whether or not money changes hands) rather than what they do. 
Next, they craft a domain (mission) for each of those lines of business under each manager.
At this step, a common format and set of guidelines not only help managers write them, but 
ensures consistency which later makes it easy to put them side by side and identify the gaps and
overlaps. The result is not a beautifully worded sentence or two. It’s a database of all the 
specific lines of business throughout the organization. 
Finally, leaders review one another’s domains and look for gaps and overlaps. These 
insights represent opportunities to adjust boundaries by refining the domain statements, or 
perhaps they serve as motivation for some structural changes. 

This is a process, not a workshop. And the more levels of management that are engaged in it, the
more powerful the impact. 

Vision

The typical vision statement: “To be recognized as a leader in quality and value and as a 
critical component of corporate strategy, to be loved by our clients and staff, and to be 
showered in accolades and bonus checks.” 

The expected reaction: “Gee, boss, I’d love to see you get that recognition.... I think I’ll 
put in a few extra hours today.” Or perhaps: “Now that I know there’s a chance that someday we 
might get all those rewards, I feel my work is more worthwhile.” 

The reality is that there’s little in it for staff, and typical vision statements induce smirks 
rather than inspiration. Furthermore, they say next to nothing about what people should do 
differently today, so they have little impact on performance. Why? Because they talk about the 
rewards we want, not what we’ll do to get them. 

An effective vision statement describes a clear picture of the organization that leaders want 
to build. It serves as a guideline for organizational changes, such that each change is designed
to add up to that end-point. It explains to staff where we’re going, and why near-term changes 
(the steps along the way) are worthwhile. And it motivates change by saying, “The bar is raised. 
Maybe we were OK by past standards; but compared to this vision, we must change.” 

To present a clear picture of where we’re going, an effective vision is phrased as, “If we’re 
to be world-class, this organization is expected to [blank].” And the blank is described in 
detail. 

When facilitating the development of leadership visions, we use five themes: 

Partnership Challenges: What clients (and internal customers) expect of us related to 
their business and their relationship with the organization. 
Resource Management Challenges: How our resources (money, time, etc.) are created, 
utilized and tracked. 
Product Design Challenges: What we do to design, build and deliver products that customers
will then own. 
Operational Services Challenges: How we provide ongoing services, both to clients and 
internally. 
People Management Challenges: The way the organization treats its staff. 

Within each of these themes, leaders craft precise statements of what’s expected of the 
organization. The overriding vision is of a competitive business within a business. This 
paradigm provides the framework within which specific expectations are crafted. 

Again, this is not a single pretty paragraph. It’s a detailed set of expectations that precisely
define the organization of the future. And again, this takes work. Developing a vision induces 
meaningful debates within the leadership team about where we’re going. For example, are we really
going to be customer focused, or do we know what’s best for the company and we’re here to control 
clients? How about a set of vision statements that reads: 

In response to customers’ requests, proactively propose a range of viable alternatives (as in 
Chevrolet, Cadillac or Rolls-Royce) that represent meaningful choices in cost and functionality. 
Fully inform customers of everything it knows relevant to their business decisions. 

Help customers make wise purchase decisions, i.e., choose from among the alternatives we offered 
based on their values/preferences, not ours.
 
Accept customers’ decisions without ever undermining them or becoming a hurdle or adversary. 

These examples are excerpted from an actual database of vision statements accumulated from 
thousands of leaders in dozens of organizations over the last 15 years. The hard work pays off. 
Developing a clear vision is great team-building, since leaders come to consensus on how the 
organization should work. A detailed vision guides every organizational change toward a common 
end point. And it’s motivational to staff since they finally understand where their leaders are 
taking them and why change is needed. 

Values

The typical values statement: “Ethics, Trust, Customer Focus, Teamwork, Initiative, Motherhood.”

Nice words. The expected reaction is something like, “OK, now that you mention it, I’ll stop 
lying, making commitments I can’t keep, back-stabbing my colleagues and abusing clients.”

But the truth is, these glowing words have only a marginal impact on day-to-day behaviors. In 
some cases, they even have the wrong impact; for example, “I’m being ethical and looking out for
the best interests of the company; therefore, I won’t give you the system you’re asking for 
because I’m the one who knows what’s best for you.” 

Most parents know you’re supposed to “criticize the behavior, not the child.” Learning theory is
quite clear on the importance of teaching behaviors, not values. It’s the same in organizations.
To be effective, values have to be translated into clear operating principles. For example, 
instead of saying “we value trust,” tell people what to do to build others’ trust, like, “We 
never make a commitment we can’t keep, and we keep every commitment.”

Essentially, this defines an organization’s culture in a way that has immediate impact. Those 
who preach values-based leadership are the ones who will tell you it takes a generation to 
change culture. In fact, we’ve seen dramatic impacts on culture in less than a year with the 
behavioral approach. 

Work on values isn’t necessarily wasted. Each value can be considered a “theme,” within which 
leaders craft actionable principles of behavior. (For examples of behavioral principles within 
the 13 themes we use to facilitate cultural change, take a look at some examples from the 
database we’ve accumulated working with a broad variety of leadership teams over the years.) 

Then comes the challenge: roll-out. Leaders teach staff the expected behaviors, talk about how 
the principles apply to their daily work, listen to staff’s feedback and measure and reinforce 
compliance. 

Again, real leadership is not a quick workshop resulting in some laudable words. It’s a process 
and a level of detail that impacts staff’s daily work. 

The Bottom Line

I can see it now.... The posts following this column will be a mixture of CIOs saying “we did 
the enterprisewide mission paragraph and it was wonderful” and consultants saying “we facilitate
mission-vision-values statements and they’re wonderful.” Perhaps I’ve been overly harsh to make 
a point. No doubt, the conventional statements do some good. But the fact is, in leadership like
in everything else in life, you get what you pay for. 

A leadership retreat that comprises two days of wordsmithing (and golf) resulting in a one-page 
statement of mission-vision-values isn’t going to change much in a large organization. 

Mission, vision, values (i.e., culture) . . . each is worth doing only if it’s done right. To 
have any real impact, leaders need to: 1) study frameworks, principles and guidelines that will 
help them do a good job; 2) adopt a well-defined process; 3) put in the “sweat equity” it takes 
to develop a meaningful level of detail; and 4) invest in effective communications of the results
with staff. 

And mission-vision-values is not one thing. Each is a different process with a different intent.
They don’t all have to be done at once. Before you start, think past the buzz-words and 
understand what you’re trying to accomplish. Plan the right sequence of leadership initiatives. 
And whatever you choose to do, do it well. 

Dean Meyer helps IT leadership teams design high-performance organizations. Author of six books,
numerous monographs, columns and articles, he brings innovative systematic approaches to what 
others consider the “soft” side of leadership. Contact him at dean@ndma.com or visit his website, 
http://www.ndma.com/web05/web05.htm for information that can help you implement these ideas, or 
with suggestions for other buzzwords to analyze in future columns.

Source: http://www.cio.com/leadership/buzz/column.html?ID=93111