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ground, tend to be longer than vision statements, but you should aim to write no more
               than a page. Your words can be as long as you would like them to be, but a shorter
               vision statement may be easier to remember.
                      Communications

                      The  communications  step  of  the  mission  and  vision  statements  development
               process  is  analogous  to  the  “L”  (leading)  part  of  the  P-O-L-C  framework.
               Communicate often: Internal communications are the key to success. People need to
               see the vision, identify with it, and know that leadership is serious about it.
                      Managers  must  evaluate  both  the  need  and  the  necessary  tactics  for
               persuasively         communicating          a       strategy       in       four       different
                                                                           [2]
               directions: upward, downward, across, and outward.
                      Communicating Upward
                      Increasingly, firms rely on bottom-up innovation processes that encourage and
               empower  middle-level  and  division  managers  to  take  ownership  of  mission  and
               vision and propose new strategies to achieve them. Communicating upward means
               that someone or some group has championed the vision internally and has succeeded
               in convincing top management of its merits and feasibility.
                      Communicating Downward
                      Communicating downward means enlisting the support of the people who’ll be
               needed to implement the mission and vision. Too often, managers undertake this task
               only after a strategy has been set in stone, thereby running the risk of undermining
               both  the  strategy  and  any  culture  of  trust  and  cooperation  that  may  have  existed
               previously. Starting on the communication process early is the best way to identify
               and surmount obstacles, and it usually ensures that a management team is working
               with  a  common  purpose  and  intensity  that  will  be  important  when  it’s  time  to
               implement the strategy.
                      Communicating Across and Outward
                      The need to communicate across and outward reflects the fact that realization
               of a mission and vision will probably require cooperation from other units of the firm
               (across) and from key external stakeholders, such as material and capital providers,
               complementors, and customers (outward). Internally, for example, the strategy may
               call  for  raw  materials  or  services  to  be  provided  by  another subsidiary;  perhaps it
               depends on sales leads from other units. The software company Emageon couldn’t
               get hospitals to adopt the leading-edge visualization software that was produced and
               sold by one subsidiary until its hardware division started cross-selling the software as
               well.  This  internal  coordination  required  a  champion  from  the  software  side  to
               convince  managers  on  the  hardware  side  of  the  need  and  benefits  of  working
               together.
                      Application
                      It  is  the  successful  execution  of  this  step—actually  using  the  mission  and
               vision  statements—that  eludes  most  organizations.  “Yes,  it  is  inconvenient  and
               expensive  to  move  beyond  the  easy  path”  and  make  decisions  that  support  the
               mission  statement,  says  Lila  Booth,  a  Philadelphia-area  consultant  who  is  on  the
               faculty of the Wharton Small Business Development Center. But ditching mission for
               expediency “is short-term thinking,” she adds, “which can be costly in the end, costly


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