The vision of an organization (why) and the associated mission (how) are the heart of an organization. At the same time, these are often beautifully formulated sentences on bleached paper or somewhere in the recesses of your hard drive. This could be better, right?
Ask yourself – or better yet: your employees – the honest question: who is aware every day of why we do what we do? And how do we think we can achieve that? What are our core values, our identity? The answer will surprise you. The issues of the day swallow up vision and mission like a greedy whale.
The reason? Mission and vision are just words. And you only feel words when they are read or spoken. In addition, the more often you hear something, the less impact the words have. The solution: make the vision and mission tangible over time.
Look for a visual representation of your vision and mission. With a startup that makes sustainable insulation materials, I have developed a large display – it hangs prominently at the entrance to the office – which shows in real time how much CO2 emissions have already been saved by replacing the old, polluting materials with the sustainable variant.
So: Be creative and come up with a way to make your vision and mission tangible over time. Especially the latter: not a static poster, but something that moves in real time with the overarching goal.