Most self-improvement literature would emphasise the
need to have a challenging personal vision and goal. All
management literature would talk about strategic
planning to create vision, mission and goals as a tool
for reaching the corporate dream. Do CEOs and
entrepreneurs really consider creating, communicating
and operationalising vision and values important?
Bain & Company launched a multi-year research
project in 1993 to gather facts about the use and
performance of management tools. Their objective was to
help inform managers about the tools available to them
and provide them with the information they need in order
to identify, select, implement and integrate the right
tools to improve their company’s performance.
Over the past 14 years, they have completed 11 surveys,
assembling a database that now includes 8,504
respondents from more than 70 countries in North
America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin
America. On a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is 100%
satisfaction, vision and mission in this survey from
1993 to 2007 scored around 4 showing high level of
satisfaction.
Another study that emphasised the importance of vision
and values was by authors James C Collins and Jerry I
Porras. They studied the differences between companies
that are merely good and those that have established
long-standing reputations for excellence and wrote the
book Built to Last. They found that great companies had
developed a core ideology and an envisioned future.
According to the authors, this critical core ideology
expresses both what we stand for and why we exist. It is
not composed or just nicely written but is discovered by
looking inside the company to find what is already
there.
Now let us look at the Indian canvas.
How far and to what extent Indian organisations feel the
need for creating and operationalising vision and
values? We reached out to a large number of people from
large, medium and small organisations through a survey.
So both the Bain study and Built to Last emphasise the
importance of vision, values and aligning people around
it. Indian organisations, however, have still not
utilised the power of this tool effectively, our study
shows.
In the study, we examined the websites of 100
organisations and reached out to 500 people from
different organisations asking if they are aware of a
vision statement . Mostly the people we contacted were
in middle to senior management, considering that, if
there is some talk about vision, they would know about
it.
What comes out very clearly is that Indian CEOs and
managers do not use the power of a well-stated vision
and values to energise and motivate the workplace. Many
organisations do not talk, even on their websites, about
vision and values.
Interestingly, within the group of companies covered in
our survey, the younger companies seem to have a well
defined vision while the older companies do not. For
example, Hero Honda motors do not talk about a vision
statement, but their other organisations like Easy Bill
and Hero ITES talk about vision and values.
Also, a large number of new age organisations—software ,
BPOs, KPOs—seem to talk more about vision and values
than the brick and motor companies (Tata is an
exception). We need to keep in mind that this study was
to see if leaders use this as a tool to motivate people
or integrate vision and values into the system.
I am sure leaders of our great companies would have a
vision but what we are saying is that they fail to
communicate that effectively. Airtel , we found, as
another organisation that constantly communicated vision
and values to the employees.
There is an interesting confusion between vision and
mission statements that many organisations face. A
mission statement tells you what the company is now. It
concentrates on the present; it defines the customer(s),
critical processes and it informs you about the desired
level of performance and vision statement outlines what
a company wants to be.
It concentrates on the future; it is a source of
inspiration ; it provides clear decision-making
criteria. Many organisations have given a goal as a
vision statement. May be, in the tough times they
confront, more and more CEOs of Indian organisations
need to use this simple tool to ignite the
organisational souls and engage employees to a
meaningful purpose.
