6.3 Mission and Vision Throughout the Organization

Organization design should reflect and support the strategy—in that sense, organizational design is a set of decision guidelines by which members will choose appropriate actions, appropriate in terms of their support for the strategy. As you learned in the previous section, the strategy is derived from the mission and vision statements and from the organization’s basic values. Strategy unifies the intent of the organization and focuses members toward actions designed to accomplish desired outcomes. The strategy encourages actions that support the purpose and discourages those that do not.

To organize, you must connect people with each other in meaningful and purposeful ways. Further, you must connect people—human resources—with the information and technology necessary for them to be successful. Organization structure defines the formal relationships among people and specifies both their roles and their responsibilities. Administrative systems govern the organization through guidelines, procedures, and policies. Information and technology define the process(es) through which members achieve outcomes. Each element must support each of the others, and together they must support the organization’s purpose, as reflected in its mission and vision.

As discussed previously, organizational culture is the workplace environment formulated from the interaction of the employees in the workplace, and is defined by all of their life experiences, strengths, weaknesses, education, upbringing, and other attributes. Leadership style and behavior also play a key role in defining organizational culture. Achieving alignment between organizational culture and a company’s mission and vision can be very powerful, however changing an organization’s culture is not easy. If you are seeking to change your company’s vision or mission, it will be challenging to realign the culture to fit, and will not happen over night.

For instance, in 2000, Procter & Gamble (P&G) sought to change a fundamental part of its vision in a way that asked the organization to source more of its innovations from external partners. Historically, P&G had invested heavily in research and development and internal sources of innovation—so much so that “not invented here” (known informally as NIH) was the dominant cultural mind-set (Lafley & Charan, 2008). NIH describes a sociological, corporate, or institutional culture that avoids using products, research, or knowledge that originated anywhere other than inside the organization. It is normally used in a pejorative sense. As a sociological phenomenon, the “not invented here” syndrome is manifested as an unwillingness to adopt an idea or product because it originates from another culture. P&G has been able to combat this NIH bias and gradually change its culture toward one that is more open to external contributions, and hence in much better alignment with its current mission and vision.

Social networks are often referred to as the “invisible organization.” They consist of individuals or organizations connected by one or more specific types of interdependency. You are probably already active in social networks through such Web communities as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, these sites are really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the emerging body of knowledge surrounding social networks. Networks deliver three unique advantages: access to “private” information (i.e., information that companies do not want competitors to have), access to diverse skill sets, and power. You may be surprised to learn that many big companies have breakdowns in communications even in divisions where the work on one project should be related to work on another. Going back to our Pixar example, for instance, Disney is fostering a network among members of its Pixar division in a way that they are more likely to share information and learn from others. The open internal network also means that a cartoon designer might have easier access to a computer programmer and together they can figure out a more innovative solution. Finally, since Pixar promotes communication across hierarchical levels and gives creatives decision-making authority, the typical power plays that might impede sharing innovation and individual creativity are prevented. Leaders see these three network advantages at work every day but might not pause to consider how their networks regulate them.

Mission, Vision, and Leadership

Leading, influencing others toward the attainment of organizational objectives, and leadership are nearly synonymous with the notions of mission and vision. We might describe a very purposeful person as being “on a mission.” As an example, Steve Demos had the personal mission of replacing cow’s milk with soy milk in U.S. supermarkets, and this mission led to his vision for, and strategy behind, the firm White Wave and its Silk line of soy milk products (Carpenter & Sanders, 2006). Similarly, we typically think of some individuals as leaders because they are visionary. For instance, when Walt Disney suggested building a theme park in a Florida swamp back in the early 1960s, few other people in the world seemed to share his view.

Any task—whether launching Silk or building the Disney empire— is that much more difficult if attempted alone. Therefore, the more that a mission or vision challenges the status quo—and recognizing that good vision statements always need to create some dissonance with the status quo—the greater will be the organization’s need of what leadership researcher Shiba calls “real change leaders”—people who will help diffuse the revolutionary philosophy even while the leader (i.e., the founder or CEO) is not present. Without real change leaders, a revolutionary vision would remain a mere idea of the visionary leader—they are the ones who make the implementation of the transformation real.

In most cases where we think of revolutionary companies, we associate the organization’s vision with its leader—for instance, Apple and Steve Jobs, Dell and Michael Dell, or Google with the team of Sergey Brin and Larry Page. In all three of these organizations, the leaders focused on creating an organization with a noble mission that enabled the employees and leadership team to achieve not only a strategic breakthrough, but to realize their personal dreams in the process.

Vision That Pervades the Organization

A broader definition of visionary leadership suggests that, if many or most of an organization’s employees understand and identify with the mission and vision, efficiency will increase because the organization’s members “on the front lines” will be making decisions fully aligned with the organization’s goals. Efficiency is achieved with limited hands-on supervision because the mission and vision serve as a form of cruise control. To make frontline responsibility effective, leadership must learn to trust workers and give them sufficient opportunities to develop quality decision-making skills.

The classic case about Johnsonville Sausage, recounted by CEO Ralph Stayer, documents how that company dramatically improved its fortunes after Stayer shared responsibility for the mission and vision, and ultimately development of the actual strategy, with all of his employees. His vision was the quest for an answer to “What Johnsonville would have to be to sell the most expensive sausage in the industry and still have the biggest market share (Stayer, 1990)?” Of course, he made other important changes as well, such as decentralizing decision making and tying individual’s rewards to company-wide performance, but he initiated them by communicating the organization’s mission and vision and letting his employees know that he believed they could make the choices and decisions needed to realize them.

Mission and vision are also relevant to leadership well beyond the impact of one or several top executives. Even beyond existing employees, various stakeholders—customers, suppliers, prospective new employees—are visiting organizations’ Web sites to read their mission and vision statements. In the process, they are trying to understand what kind of organization they are reading about and what the organization’s values and ethics are. Ultimately, they are seeking to determine whether the organization and what it stands for are a good fit for them.

Vision, Mission, and Controlling

The term controlling often conjures up images of exerting power over organizational members akin to puppets on a string, but controlling today involves ensuring that organizations operate efficiently and effectively. Controlling consists of three steps: (1) establishing performance standards, (2) comparing actual performance against standards, and (3) taking corrective action when necessary. Mission and vision are both directly and indirectly related to all three steps.