My staff are just not moving. I don’t seem to get the kind of staff with the right work ethics. My employees don’t communicate effectively. My employees don’t go out of their way for the organization to succeed.
My employees are Un, Un, Un…unreliable, untrustworthy, unprofessional, un…!
Are some of these complaints resonating with your experience as an employer or team leader?
Before you look far for a solution, you may want to look closer to home- home being the very reason the organization exists-the MISSION!
What are you out to accomplish and how does it add value to the world? Is this well-articulated to your employees? Are they oriented from the onset to find their own personal fit in the accomplishment of this mission? Are your employees supported to find the relationship between the organizational mission and their own personal mission and how one adds value to the other?
A clear mission helps unify corporate environments
When your team understand where they are going and why, they can be better united and driven towards a common goal, reducing the risk of misinterpretation and mistakes within the company.
This reduces unnecessary and directionless tasks and keeps an organization on the path toward success.
If a company and its team are aligned with a clear mission and vision, they are more likely to be motivated and inspired to work. People are better able to align with the core values of a company, commit to their roles, and engage with not only their tasks but also the long-term goals of their organisation.
When there is clarity of vision, people get exposure to the business beyond what they see every day. They also get the context for how their role fits into the bigger picture which makes them feel that they are an important part of the organization.
Your staff will feel a sense of pride, derive meaning and be committed
A well- developed, clearly articulated and inspiring mission will give employees a sense of pride, meaning to work towards and reason and energy to do their daily work. They will feel more confident to approach customers because they are clear of the solution they offer to the customer and decision making will become easier as it aligns to a clear vision and mission.
A point to keep in mind is that employees come to work not for you but for themselves. That’s a fact and ignoring this is burying our heads in the sand. When we interview, orient and contract with someone, there is something they are looking for. There is a need they want to meet and there is a need that we as employees or business leaders want to meet. Marrying the two needs- employer’s need and employee’s need and finding a balance will bring new energy, commitment and focus to your work.
Is a clear mission an end in itself? No, but it’s a start of a great journey
While a clear, inspiring and well-defined mission is not an end in itself and in isolation does not make for an engaged company culture or even translate to output, a clear mission, values, accompanied with clear operational procedures will help you to start the narrative and build a winning brand and culture as an organization.
Think about your company as your own life. It has a life cycle- birth, growth, contribution and probably…end. While we want our companies to live forever, if these are companies that serve people in a changing world, they’ll have to keep growing and changing as well such that one cycle or product may end and another one begins. An effective organization should be organically growing based on the need that it exists to serve.
Now looking at it this way, one way to formulate a Mission statement and Values that will indeed help you to be of service and impact the world while making business sense or achieving whatever outcome you are out to achieve is to write your mission or review an existing one as an obituary. Think about how you would want your company to be remembered. Thinking about the end goal and how you would like your organization to be remembered can help you define and align your purpose and the behavior that will get
you there.
The central role of company values
A vision and mission cannot be accomplished without values taking their central place.
You may have a case for organizations that cheat and short cut but seem to be dominating the market. However, if you look around you will not find such companies enjoying this position for a long time.
Designing values is more than coming up with a beautiful set of words. Values have to be embedded in all aspects of your organization.
To be purposeful and move seamlessly towards your mission, you need to recruit against your values, reward against your values, review payment against your values, promote against your values, fire against your values and certainly sign business deals against your
values.
Thus your values should be loud and clear to everyone in the organization and embedded in all activities.
Aligning all activities with your mission, vision and values can be beneficial beyond any other strategy as they influence a number performance related aspects such as;
Motivation and Ownership Mentality
Employees that understand and buy in the company mission, vision and values tend to be highly motivated and willing to take on an ownership mentality. They will defend the organization in the face of any external attack. They’ll market the products with zeal even
if they may not necessarily belong to the marketing department and they tend to stick with the company longer.
Increased Productivity and Reduced Time Waste
In a 2016 survey by workforce, it was found that 86% of employees surveyed did not clearly understand their companies’ strategy. This causes most of the employees to spend nearly half of their time on activities that are not aligned to the organizational strategy.
Did you get this? You pay them a full salary, to spend half their time on activities that are not moving your company forward-just because you have not aligned and communicated your mission, vision and values effectively.
It’s never too late though. You can make changes and embed your company mission, vision and values in your day to day work thereby building a winning culture for your
organization.
Recommendations
- Have a periodic review of the mission and vision and ensure every employee understands where the organization is going and why.
- Collaborate with your workforce as you develop or review your value, creating a sense of ownership and engagement that can never be achieved by thrusting it upon them.
- Make sure employees understand what the organizational values mean to them personally, their personal development, their jobs, thus turning the values from words into jobs.
- Use your values in decisions affecting both business and people.
- Encourage your staff to speak up when company values are being violated and to hold one another accountable for everyone’s growth.