MISSION STATEMENTS and STRATEGY Simone Vermeulen, 1. The nature of strategy The basic questions Strategic management resolves three basic questions: 1. What do we want? This question refers to the steering elements of a strategy, which include: the business an organization is in, or wants to be in; the objectives; the values and norms, and the corporate culture, including procedures and systems. 2. What must we do? Here, the organization focuses on the requirements and evolution of the environment. What are the regulatory changes affecting the company? How do consumer preferences evolve? Which threats do we have to face? How is the competition doing? 3.
What can we do? Which resources do we have and which one do we need to acquire or to develop? There is a constant tension between the ambition, the actual and potential resources and the exigencies of the environment. An organization in its quest for superior returns, resolves this tension through the implementation of a competitive advantage which is the answer to the question: what makes the company offerings “irresistibly attractive” to the potential customer? The mission statement steers the strategy The mission statement belongs to the steering elements. It summarizes the basic choices which guide the decision making process over a longer period of time. As a matter of common sense, most strategic plans start with the mission statement, or at least with the goals and objectives that a company wants to reach through the plan. However, the crafting of a strategy is not so straightforward subject to the laws of orderly thinking. In daily life practice an organization will constantly review its ambitions against its resources and the environment.
The Business plan on Financial statement 3
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These can be affected by moves of competitors, or by new laws for example. What is finally put down as the goal of an organsiation is not so much the “dream”, but rather the result of careful consideration and continuous rethinking of numerous strategically relevant factors. Contrary to most textbook formulations, we are of the opinion that a mission statement may be the starting point of a strategic plan, but is not necessarily the starting point of a strategic process. 2. What is a mission? An organization’s mission is the purpose or reason for the organization’s existence. It tells what the company is providing to society – a service, a product or both.
A mission statement then is a text including the goals and objectives, the strategic choices and the values. Neither in practice nor in the literature is there one all compassing prescription about what a mission statement should cover. A well-conceived mission statement defines the fundamental unique purpose that sets a company apart from other firms of its type and identifies the scope of the company’s operations in terms of products (services) offered and markets served. It may also include the firm’s philosophy about how it does business and treats its employees. It puts into words not only what the company is now, but what it wants to become (ambition) – the vision of management of the firm’s future. (Thus there is a difference between a mission: the latter describes what the firm does now, and the vision, which articulates what the firm would like to become.
Of course, mission and vision can be combined in one statement. Also in a lot of articles, mission and vision are used as synonyms).
In summary, a mission statement ” tells who we are and what we do as well as what we’d like to become.” 1 Nightingale presents the following definition:.
