“We want to be the leader in our market within 5 years.”
We’ve all heard this statement from business leaders.
In their mind, this sentence answers the question:
What is your company’s vision?
That’s not a bad answer in itself. The problem is that it answers the wrong question.
Wanting to be the leader in your market is not a vision. At best, it’s a simple goal.
In this shortcut, we will pragmatically break down what a vision, a mission, and a goal are.
Before defining what a vision, a mission, and a goal are, we need to understand why we need to differentiate them.
Many business leaders don’t understand why their employees aren’t motivated or why they don’t help them fully achieve the company’s goals by working even harder.
So, like any humans, these leaders look for solutions:
Hire “better” people
Have meetings in a ball pool for kids
Buy a foosball table
They end up dealing with 200 unmotivated people instead of achieving their dream goals with only 10 inspired people.
Why is this a reality for so many companies?
In recent years, many companies (especially start-ups) have forgotten one important thing:
Growth is a tool. Yes, it’s an effective tool when it helps a group of people reach a common goal, but it is not an end in itself.
So, they hire a lot of “senior-gizmo” to lead “junior-thingy” teams. These companies encourage their employees to design products and services focused on HOLY GROWTH.
Product owners and product managers will “do their job well” by being entirely focused on growth.
“Carry on. There are still many features to be produced!”
Teams are under stress.
New features don’t provide that much additional value to the users and end customers. The products and services become a Frankenstein’s monster of features.
But why?
Because companies forget why they exist.
They forget the problem they were meant to solve. They forget they were meant to help their clients achieve THEIR dream outcome.
Now they do what they do to increase their retention rate. They do what they do for the metrics. They do what they do for growth... and forget what really matters.
Every day you will hear people say:
That’s because the essence of what a vision is is misunderstood.
Out of ignorance, many get it wrong.
In most companies, when you talk about vision, you will see this template come up:
“We want to be the leader in xxx market, by the end of yyyy.”
As we said above, this is a goal, not a vision.
A vision is a tangible illustration of your business’s future.
A well-defined vision will help you unite your community (customers, collaborators, employees, partners, etc.) around a clear, tangible image of the future.
Your vision represents the things your community follows you for and why your employees joined in the first place.
Take action:
Depict the future you want to create as precisely as possible. What you’ll end up with is your vision.
If you are the leader of anything, one of your responsibilities is to articulate the team’s. Articulating this allows everyone to align around a shared image of the future and build it together.
This dream is not about money, growth, or even market leadership. This dream is about beliefs, principles, and effect.
Having a vision is extremely powerful, but only if you articulate it clearly and precisely.
Why define a mission?
Because it’s cool? Because it’s trendy?
No. Because it helps you achieve your goals.
Often out of fashion or in search of business success, more and more companies wish to become mission-driven companies.
These companies are not wrong; having a mission is one of the most valuable tools for a business. The problem is that these companies don’t know why defining a clear mission is valuable.
Your mission is the current “why” behind your company’s existence.
Knowing why you fight your battles enables your team to win them all... simply because the group knows what they’re fighting for.
So, a mission is like the goal of goals. It is a clear and simple abstraction of all your goals.
It’s like saying, “We do all this to really achieve that and have this specific effect.”
Take action:
See your mission as a military operation’s main objective. All the sub-objectives to achieve the mission are your goals.
Articulate your business’s end goal and ensure all sub-objectives serve this purpose.
A goal is a simple, quantifiable objective to reach.
If it is quantifiable, you can define actions to reach it.
If it is blurry, it’s only a dream... and dreams can quickly become nightmares.
Moreover, winners and losers share the same dreams. What separates them is the goals they set for themselves and the work they put in to reach them.
Take action:
Define clear and quantifiable objectives. You should be able to tell if you hit the target. If not, it’s poorly articulated. You should rework the articulation of that goal.
By defining your mission and illustrating it with your vision, you will help your community achieve its dreams. That’s why you created or joined your company in the first place. That is the only thing that matters.
To do a great job at articulating your vision, mission, and goals:
Quantifiable goals. Clear mission. Palpable vision.
PROVOK.