As a college student or recent graduate, you’re probably giving your future career a great deal of thought. And I’m guessing you’re interested in a career you want to enjoy. You’ll want to like what do you do because you’re going to do it a lot! According to statistics from the research firm Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the average American works 1,788 hours per year. Over 40 years, that could add up to over 71,000 hours! Take a moment to let that staggering number sink in. You may spend more time working than sleeping, eating or participating in your favorite recreational activities throughout your life!
While you want to enjoy what you do, I’m also guessing you want to enjoy the company you work for, as you might be there for a very long time. Longevity for employees is now increasing. Recent statistics show that employees stay at their jobs an average of 4.6 years. This is why it’s so important to know exactly what you want to do before you start doing it. Beginning a career in a field you love and sticking with it will make all the difference in your future. But in order to enjoy a career you love, you need something vitally important: your voice.
No, I’m not referring to the popular singing show on TV. I’m referring to a combination of your personal mission, vision and values. All successful companies must have a voice. A voice shapes the culture of an organization and serves as a guide to employees and management. Organizations with a well thought-out voice have direction, purpose and achievement in the workplace. These organizations know where they want to be (the big picture) and do the appropriate things (the details) to get there. Every step of the way, their employees enthusiastically project that voice to customers, vendors and their local communities. Without a voice, high-powered organizations will find it impossible to align their goals and objectives to create success.
So just what does a personal mission, vision and values statement entail? Let’s dig in a bit.
A mission statement for a company is a concise, meaningful sentence or two that represents the purpose of the organization. Mission statements are often action-based, explaining how the company’s objectives serve both employees and customers. Here are a few examples:
LinkedIn: “To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”
Amazon: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”
Nike: “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
A personal mission statement is similar. It defines who you are as a person and identifies your purpose, whether that’s on the job or simply in life. It explains where you see yourself in the future, how you plan to pursue that purpose and why it matters so much to you. Like an organizational mission statement, it should be clear and concise – a soundbite or quick elevator pitch, if you will. Here is a sample personal mission statement:
“To use my writing skills to inspire and educate others around the world to make a change.”
An organizational vision differs a bit from a mission statement. A vision statement is a company’s “one day” statement, or the goal a company strives to embody or see in its consumers. A company’s vision statement is essentially the world the company envisions for the future, while the mission statement defines the strategy for reaching that vision. Here’s an example:
Tesla: “To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.”
Lastly, an organizational value statement defines what is important to a company and its employees and discusses the company’s most essential values. Here is an example:
“We believe food has the power to change the world. We do it by being real.”
Similarly, a personal value statement defines what values are most important to YOU. Here is an example:
“To be a respectable employee, friend and member of the community and make a positive impact on others by being honest, fair and reliable.”
These three important aspects—your mission, vision and values – all create your voice. In essence, you are sharing with the world WHO you are, WHAT you believe and WHERE you want to go. No two people share the exact same voice. Your voice is unique only to YOU. By fine tuning this voice, you will impress future employers when they see you know who you are and what you want. If this sounds intimidating, fret not. Begin by grabbing a piece of scratch paper and writing out your thoughts. You might begin by scribbling a few adjectives that describe you best. Then think about what you value most. Is it integrity? Reliability? Honesty? Lastly, what is it you really want, and how do you plan to get there? Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten years? Don’t worry if you don’t have it all figured out. You are young, and sometimes plans change. But by perfecting your unique voice, you will set yourself apart from the rest.
Once you come up with your mission, vision and values statement, start reciting it to your friends and loved ones. Say it with confidence and a smile. By the time you land an interview at your desired company, you’ll have it down pat!
By being clear about who you are, what you believe and where you want to go, you’ll be sure to stay on track and pursue the career of your dreams!
For more on your voice, check out College to Career today!
Wondering what is all behind the process of developing a High Performance Organization? Wonder no more. Check out our Infographic for those who learn by seeing.
Today, we’ll look at the 3 biggest mistakes commonly made by organizations during the creation of their Vision Statement.
As discussed in the last post, Organizations wanting to perform at the highest level do so by working to leverage 3 commitments. These commitments set the stage for overall efficiency, growth, and prosperity.
Mission Statement
Vision Statement
Core Values
Great leaders vision-cast for their organization.
They have an idea of where they want their organization to be down the road. They chart their desired course ahead of time. The best leaders will map out their Vision, put this Vision on paper, and share their Vision with the entire crew. However, too many leaders fail to be precise—they don’t follow a top-notch process to ensure their Vision truly comes to fruition.
Mistakes You Want to Avoid
Mistake #1: Developing a Vision Statement that isn’t achievable in the near future—within an employee’s working lifetime.
This is a bad idea. Instead of a far-off Vision as the organizational aim, your employees need to envision achieving the goal far sooner, so they can potentially experience the achievement as part of the team.
No employee wants to think that they are expected to work hard to achieve an organization’s Vision without still being around to celebrate it happening. If the goal lies too far into the future, employees don’t feel invested in the outcome. They don’t feel committed to it. Instead, it gets shelved and ignored. With an achievable goal, hope, motivation, and perseverance are ignited. They can see your destination on the horizon. Your excitement will become theirs.
When creating a Vision statement, make it achievable. Once it’s achieved, make sure you revisit it and make any adjustments and corrections to it as you move forward.
Mistake #2: The Vision statement is not included in the hiring and recruitment processes.
As you build your team, make sure that your potential employees know the direction your organization is headed; starting the moment they first step through the door. Let them know where they’re going when they first get onboard. It’s not enough to expect them to figure it out by osmosis. Don’t leave your Vision to chance. Tell them up front what it is and the role they will play in achieving it.
Your Vision statement must be seamlessly incorporated into your hiring practices and documents. If it is not obvious from the start, you risk spending a lot of time, energy, and money acquiring people who don’t know where you’re going and don’t care. Your organization will be rudderless.
Your Vision Statement is an invaluable motivator for your employees. Would you want to board a ship or a plane without knowing the destination ahead of time? Your employees won’t want to either.
As a leader, you are the captain. Your crew—your employees—and your passengers—your customers—must be informed as to the destination of your journey and be enthusiastic about it.
This is how high performance gets started!
Mistake # 3: Failing to integrate your commitment to your organization’s Core Values and Mission Statement into your Vision Statement—not making it a complete, holistic package.
A Vision statement should articulate two crucial items in addition to your Vision: your Mission statement and the core Values guiding your organization.
These three components are interdependent and must work together as a team. Just like a top coach wouldn’t play merely one-third of his football squad in the Super Bowl, it is not possible to create a high-performing organization from the ground up if it lacks any of these three key components.
The success of your Vision is important to your future—much too important to omit any of the key supporting pieces and risk it failing.
If creating these three documents sounds like a lot to bite off, don’t be discouraged! Human Resources experts exist to help you, and resources exist to make it easier. The best ones guide you through the whole process, just like the one I created with my team. We’ve done the foundational work for you to make it all happen smoothly and simply. Our HR Mastery Toolkit teaches and guides you to implement the best practices used by some of the top, most successful organizations in the world.
We begin with this essential first task: establishing your organization’s Mission, Vision, and Values.
By using a top-notch process to create your Vision Statement, you’ll set the stage for your employees to achieve it.
In the next post, we will continue examining this critical trio. I’ll give you some of the expertise I’ve gleaned from more than twenty years in the field of human resources. Come back to read: Mistakes Organizations Make When Determining Their Core Values.
___________
Join us at the 2018 Annual ABACC Conference at the Wyndham Orlando Florida Resort (International Drive). We will be exhibiting at this informative conference February 13 through February 16, 2018. Learn more here.
We will also be speaking (Grace and Wisdom When Right-Sizing Your Staff) and exhibiting for the ABHE Annual Meeting February 21-23, 2018 at the Rosen Plaza Hotel, Orlando Florida Learn more here.
Contact us directly to set up a personal meeting in advance of the annual meeting. Looking forward to creating new friends and fostering deeper relationships with contacts we know.
In His Name HR helps organizations build high performance Human Resources programs. Visit them at In HIS Name HR or e-mail them here.
Mark A. Griffin is the founder and chief consultant of In His Name HR LLC. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Vision statements should consider how the market and your customer base may change within the next three, five, or seven years, how such changes can create opportunities for your organization, how to bridge the distance between how things are today and where you envision you want to be within your established timeframe, how you will surpass your competitors in order to gain greater market share, and also what you are doing collectively to capitalize on the changes in business conditions and your business’s needs.
Like a mission, an organization’s vision has ideally been created/ contributed to by all employees. The more buy-in an organization has among its employees, the greater the effectiveness of the vision. The vision should inspire—it demonstrates where the organization as a whole wants to be, and what will occur as it delivers on its mission. It is where an organization envisions itself in those three, five, or seven years. (We prefer five years, because that is a reasonable amount of time for most organizations to get to the next step.)
So, whereas the mission is what an organization does best every day, its vision is what the future looks like when it fulfills its mission exceedingly well. Some effective vision statements include Nike: To be the number one athletic company in the world, and Amazon: Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
When I worked for Gatorade, we developed an incredible advantage over the competition because we took the time to establish its vision, where they were going and when they wanted to get there, and ensured that every employee shared this vision. Gatorade’s competitors at the time, Powerade and All Sport, faded away as a result, because they lacked a commonly shared vision, they lacked direction—they lacked a road map.
___________
In His Name HR helps organizations build high performance Human Resources programs. Visit them at In HIS Name HR or e-mail them here.
Mark A. Griffin is the founder and chief consultant of In His Name HR LLC. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.
MARK A. GRIFFIN is the founder and chief consultant of In His Name HR LLC. Follow him on Facebook at InHISNameHR or Twitter @InHISNameHR. In His Name HR helps organizations build HR programs based on MVV. Contact them for more information at (InHISNameHR.com) or e-mail them at HR@InHISNameHR.com.
CLA Dallas 2017: Clarify your organization’s leadership strength by attending Mark Griffin’s CLA Conference workshop “Managing Employees to Success.” April 4–6, 2017.
_______
In His Name HR helps organizations build high performance Human Resources programs. Visit them at In HIS Name HR or e-mail them here.
Mark A. Griffin is the founder and chief consultant of In His Name HR LLC. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.
You don’t want to miss this unique and powerful event.
17 Business Owners
Offering Incredible Business Insight
15-Minute Presentations Each
Ted Talks Format with Brief Question And Answer Following
Come hear Mark A. Griffin deliver in 15 minutes, “How to Build High Performance Organizations”.
The purpose of this gathering is to provide a platform for Spirit-led business leaders in Central Pennsylvania to speak about Kingdom business principles. This will “Encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
Please visit this Symposium Speaker Page for information on speakers and topics. Want to know what time each speaker presents? The speaker schedule is located here.
Mark A. Griffin is the founder and chief consultant of In HIS Name HR LLC, a human resources outsourcing and career coaching firm created to help companies pilot the complex issues of managing HR.
As a human resources professional with 20-plus years of experience in both public (Quaker Oats Company, Kodak Inc., Merck Inc.) and private companies (Woolrich, Conestoga Wood Specialties, Valco Companies Inc.), Mark is passionate about building high performance workplaces through utilizing best practices while leading companies with strong values.
While serving in the United States Air Force, Mark received his Bachelor of Science degree in Human Resources Administration from Saint Leo University. He earned his MBA from Bloomsburg University while interning for Congressmen Kanjorski as a Military Liaison during the first Gulf War. Mark has completed several executive education programs at the University of Michigan and is a certified practitioner of the Myers Briggs Type Instrument MBTI®.
Mark and his wife, Gail, have two adult children, and will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary this June. They attend LCBC Church. Mark has traveled the world coaching leaders on “Business as Mission” in Eastern Europe, India, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Speaker and accomplished HR consultant, Mark A. Griffin gives Christian leaders encouragement in building values-led organizations during these difficult economic times.
Do you want to take your organization to the next level? Now more than ever, organizational leadership needs to create a platform to help employees succeed. Come and learn how to do this by implementing processes that will lead your organization to High Performance.
Leading an organization with clarity in Mission, Vision and, most importantly, Values makes good organizational leadership sense. We call organizations that do that successfully, “High Performance Organizations,” or simply HPO’s.
The HPO experience:
Incredible organizational growth
Builds great HR integration
Less employee morale issues
Increased donor support
Lower absenteeism
Higher quality project delivery
Better perceptions from your community and recipients of services
Mark A. Griffin is the founder and chief consultant of In HIS Name HR LLC, a human resources outsourcing and career coaching firm created to help companies pilot the complex issues of managing HR.
As a human resources professional with 20-plus years of experience in both public (Quaker Oats Company, Kodak Inc., Merck Inc.) and private companies (Woolrich, Conestoga Wood Specialties, Valco Companies Inc.), Mark is passionate about building high performance workplaces through utilizing best practices while leading companies with strong values.
While serving in the United States Air Force, Mark received his Bachelor of Science degree in Human Resources Administration from Saint Leo University. He earned his MBA from Bloomsburg University while interning for Congressmen Kanjorski as a Military Liaison during the first Gulf War. Mark has completed several executive education programs at the University of Michigan and is a certified practitioner of the Myers Briggs Type Instrument MBTI®.
Mark and his wife, Gail, have two adult children, and will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary this June. They attend LCBC Church. Mark has traveled the world coaching leaders on “Business as Mission” in Eastern Europe, India, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Speaker and accomplished HR consultant, Mark A. Griffin gives Christian leaders encouragement in building values-led organizations during these difficult economic times.
Give your employees hope and a bright future in this upside down world.
Tremendous Life Books.com presents:
How To Build “High Performance” Organizations
Now more than ever, organizational leadership needs to create a platform to help employees succeed. Come and learn how to do this by implementing processes that will lead your organization to High Performance.
Leading an organization with clarity in Mission, Vision and, most importantly, Values makes good business sense. We call organizations that do that successfully, “High Performance Organizations,” or simply HPO’s.
Mark A. Griffin is the founder and chief consultant of In HIS Name HR LLC, a human resources outsourcing and career coaching firm created to help companies pilot the complex issues of managing HR.
As a human resources professional with 20-plus years of experience in both public (Quaker Oats Company, Kodak Inc., Merck Inc.) and private companies (Woolrich, Conestoga Wood Specialties, Valco Companies Inc.), Mark is passionate about building high performance workplaces through utilizing best practices while leading companies with strong values.
While serving in the United States Air Force, Mark received his Bachelor of Science degree in Human Resources Administration from Saint Leo University. He earned his MBA from Bloomsburg University while interning for Congressmen Kanjorski as a Military Liaison during the first Gulf War. Mark has completed several executive education programs at the University of Michigan and is a certified practitioner of the Myers Briggs Type Instrument MBTI®.
Mark and his wife, Gail, have two adult children, and recently celebrated their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary. They attend LCBC Church. Mark has traveled the world coaching leaders on “Buiness as Mission” in Eastern Europe and India and the Dominican Republic.
A recently published author (How to Build “Kingdom-Minded” Organizations) , speaker and accomplished HR consultant, Mark A. Griffin gives Christian leaders encouragement in building values-led organizations during these difficult economic times.
Give your employees hope and a bright future in this upside down world.
Now more than ever, organizational leadership needs to create a platform to help employees succeed. Come and learn how to do this by implementing processes that will lead your organization to High Performance.
Leading an organization with clarity in Mission, Vision and, most importantly, Values makes good business sense. We call organizations that do that successfully, “High Performance Organizations,” or simply HPO’s.
Mark A. Griffin is the founder and chief consultant of In HIS Name HR LLC, a human resources outsourcing and career coaching firm created to help companies pilot the complex issues of managing HR.
As a human resources professional with 20-plus years of experience in both public (Quaker Oats Company, Kodak Inc., Merck Inc.) and private companies (Woolrich, Conestoga Wood Specialties, Valco Companies Inc.), Mark is passionate about building high performance workplaces through utilizing best practices while leading companies with strong values.
While serving in the United States Air Force, Mark received his Bachelor of Science degree in Human Resources Administration from Saint Leo University. He earned his MBA from Bloomsburg University while interning for Congressmen Kanjorski as a Military Liaison during the first Gulf War. Mark has completed several executive education programs at the University of Michigan and is a certified practitioner of the Myers Briggs Type Instrument MBTI®.
MARK A. GRIFFIN is the founder and chief consultant of In His Name HR LLC. Follow him on Facebook at InHISNameHR or Twitter @InHIS-NameHR. In His Name HR helps organizations build HR programs based on MVV. Contact them for more information at (InHISNameHR.com) or e-mail them at MGriffin@InHISNameHR.com.
CLA Dallas 2014: Clarify your organization’s Mission, Vision, and Values by attending Mark Griffin’s CLA Conference workshop Building a Kingdom-Minded Organization.” April 14–16.
