Your vision should be the same for your company and for your customers
Let’s play the vision statement game. Where is your vision statement in your company? You know who would know? HR? Unlikely. The CEO? You are getting colder… Marketing maybe? No.
Time’s up.
The answer is the cleaning guy. He probably looks at it every time he dusts the vision statement plaque off or straightens the vision statement poster.
Question two, what percentage of your employees could tell you your vision statement? That depends…does your cleaning guy work for you or is he contract? Now here is the really tough question, how many of your customers know your vision statement?
Hold on you say, you own your own small business and you have memorized your vision statement? If it works for you that’s great, but I would guess some of the small business owners reading this, read an article in Inc Magazine about the importance of vision statements before they started their business and then to find their perfect vision statement, they looked up vision statement examples online. A few of the readers probably even found some online vision statement wizard to produce one for for fifty dollars. Having checked off the vision statement box, the readers move on to success based on their wizard generated vision statement.
Regardless of your current vision statement status, you are probably thinking to yourself, “You’re kidding me, another commentary about vision statements?” Look, I know lots and lots and lots and lots of books and articles have been written about vision statements, but before you skip this, listen to me, a lot of those other sources are fundamentally wrong. That’s right. Your class in business school, the latest management book, the seminars, they are probably wrong. Maybe you didn’t totally waste your time, I guess having a vision statement for your company is better than not having one, but the idea that your company has its own vision statement defining its own success is absolutely the wrong way to approach the vision statement.
I know I have been mocking vision statements, but the truth is I love vision statements. Done correctly, they should drive you, inspire your heart and mind, not just be a statement on some dusty plaque in the corner of the board room. More importantly they should not just drive you, but your employees, and even your customers. Everyone in your company should be living your vision statement.
So what is my big idea, why am I right, and 30 years and thousands of articles on vision statements wrong? Because your vision statement and your customers vision statement should be the same. Your vision statement for your company should be the same as it is for your customers. Why? Because what you want for your company should be in perfect alignment with what you what you want for your customer. Your company is in business to make it happen.
The key reason, the reason that makes the vision statement the foundation of your company, is that the singular alignment ensures everyone is working towards the same goal. As a customer all other things being equal, who would you rather do business with the company whose vision is for you to be successful or for that company to be successful? Plus, a customer-centric vision statement lets the customer know how doing business with you will affect their lives.
The other advantage of focusing on your customers is that strategically it allows you to focus on the things that will bring success and not on your current position. A great example of a vision that is out of alignment is this vision statement from Microsoft, “A personal computer in every home running Microsoft software.” Yeah! I am doing business with a company whose focus, its vision, is to put a computer with Microsoft software on my desktop regardless of what I really need. Plus, it is obvious how such a vision statement would keep them from missing the trends of what their customers truly want. Despite the commercials from Apple demeaning Microsoft, I have always liked Microsoft from a technology perspective. I continue to think that Microsoft has has given a lot of power to the average person to accomplish the tasks that were important to them and eliminate the need to hire an expensive developer. They have also been excellent at being fast followers, producing a passable product first, but then the sophomore and junior efforts would be near the top of the industry. That being said, they have moved from their position of dominance, and I would argue that the culture that created that vision statement kept them from keeping ahead of what needed to be delivered.
A better vision statement is Amazon’s, which gets much closer to what I am envisioning, “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.” What do you get if you do business with Amazon? A place where you can find and discover anything you want to buy online.” Better because it is focused on the customer, but is that what customers really want? Is the goal of your shopping to find and discover things online? What about other platforms like mobile devices?
Three Reasons For A Unified Vision Statement
- Align your goals with the customers
- Allows your company to focus on what will bring true success, not technologies or strategies
- Your vision correlates to the growth and success