Why Mission & Vision Statements Are The Worst
There is a delicate balance between modesty and being too pushy. How are your vision statements or mission statements holding up? On the one hand, you can be too modest and completely let yourself get lost in a crowd of pushers.
On the other hand, you can be too pushy, and be seen as too brash and aggressive. Being seen as too pushy can drive people away while being too modest will make you invisible. And as that goes for us humans, it can also apply to businesses.
When carefully crafting, forming and living your brand identity, it’s easy to stay within your own bubble and assume that every single nuance, every single period and every single comma will automatically come across to your audience, but in reality, we find that this often isn’t the case.
Does Your Core Message Speak To Your Audience Or Are Your Vision Statements All Fluff?
The key to good reputation management starts with your core message. This is about the very identity of your company. What does your company do, what does it want to contribute to people’s lives (both internal as external)?
If the company’s core message is simply to make money that’s fine, and brutally honest, but you might find that it would be a tad harder to convert customers to champions or even ambassadors.
When you are preparing your mission statement it needs to focus on who you are and how you help people. Most people don’t care about your vision and goals unless there’s something in it for them.
The core message, or mission and vision as some people would call them, can be aspirational and lofty. It doesn’t even matter if it sounds unoriginal. The most important thing is that the core message needs to be authentic.
It needs to be something that the founder of the company, the management team, the senior operations members, and everyone on the work floor can find themselves in.
This is hard as getting to one-size fits all kind of forces the core message (and its values) to become rather bland. The key is to be open enough to hear everyone’s opinion, but be forceful sufficient to safeguard authenticity.
You Need To Live Out Your Mission Statement, Not Just Talk About It
Once you know what your company is all about, it’s time to walk the walk. Don’t start printing off new company booklets that scream the new company values, or get your employees in business values workshops as a way to consolidate your newly embraced identity.
No, you will need to take out some significant time to let things sink in. Of this new identity, there will be as many interpretations as you have employees. And this is absolutely fine, there is not going to be a single silver bullet to fix everything.
In fact, having multiple perspectives will help you tweak your message to not only firm up your message but also to encode it in your company’s DNA. One of the best leadership strategies you should focus on is leading by example. People watch what you do, not what you say, so be sure to follow up your vision statement with action.
Building a successful company starts with you, so be sure to take consistent action at making yourself better. Personal development should be a primary focus of your daily habits. You might want to check out a couple of posts of mine on different personal development books and marketing books I recommend for entrepreneurs. You can access them below.
Top 4 Personal Development Books – Books That Will Change Your Life And Business, and 5 Online Marketing Books You Need To Read As A Business Owner.
Are Your Employees Working Against Your Mission Statement?
Be aware that the main people who make or break your reputation are your own employees. That’s why giving them time, the possibility of feedback, and to find ways to create a new brand identity theirs, will provide you with the best opportunity to succeed.
Always be aware that a reputation (hopefully a good one) is built over many years. A reputation can be destroyed in a matter of days and in the Twitter and Facebook-age in mere seconds.
The best way to get your employees on board is to find their own interpretation and allow them time to explore. For example, if helping the local community is one of your company’s values, don’t just assume that the way your company does that will resonate with others or your employees.
Aligning Your Company Vision Statement With Your Team’s Vision
If a company views that donating a sum of money constitutes to charity, but an individual sees helping in a soup kitchen as the best way to help, there might be some distance between those two standpoints. And distance is not bad, it’s a reason to engage in a dialogue and an opportunity to enrich everyone’s definition of things.
The best products are always a result of getting input from different sources and negotiation. All things said and done, the resulting work should be that you have found a core business message that is authentic and has the support of your employees.
If your employees and team aren’t on board, it might be time to get them off the team. It may sound harsh, but having the wrong people on your team and in your organization can hinder your success just as much as getting the right people with you.
A great book I recommend checking out on this subject is called The Energy Bus. This book can really help you grasp the concept of working with the right people in your team. You can pick up a copy on Amazon here.
Time To Start Sharing Your Mission Statement Or Core Message With Your Audience
The only thing that is left to do now is to communicate this widely to your customers or would be customers. And don’t just drop it on your website and leave it there for no one to read.
What you want to do is to drop modesty a bit. Think interviews in business magazines, think luxurious trade show displays, consider investing in a billboard. Because this is the real differentiator of the line between modest and aggressive, the knowledge that your message carries truth.
When a business’ mission statement and vision statement has been constructed with integrity, honesty, and involvement, the message becomes true. And when the message becomes true, it’s no longer balancing between modesty and pushy, it’s about allowing people to look inside and be awestruck.
How To Get The Word Out About Your Business And Vision Statements
What Tools And Systems Do You Need In Place To Make Your Vision Statements A Reality
It would be great if you could just shout your mission statement from the rooftops and your message would reach the world, but in reality, you’ll need some tools to do it. The great news is, that no matter how big or small your business is, the right tools and systems to promote it, aren’t out of your reach.
Some of the best tools to leverage your time and promote your business are a blog, email autoresponder and a sales funnel system. With these tools in place, you can scale your business to a massive level with virtually no overhead.
Why blogging is so important is because it can attract your ideal target market to your business, and help to convert that traffic into leads and sales for your business. Plus when you blog, it can work for your business 24/7 because it is evergreen content.
Check out my post on 14 Easy Steps On How To Write The Perfect Blog Post Fast to learn more. In addition to blogging, you want a way to capture your website visitors information so you can share your vision statement and message to them on an ongoing basis.
Additional Tools To Promote Your Core Message You May Want to Check Out
The tools you’ll need to capture information of your site visitors are with a sales funnel system and an email autoresponder. These tools in conjunction with a content marketing strategy like blogging can help you generate leads, sales, and signups for your business on a 24/7 basis.
If you don’t yet have these tools set up for your business you can check out a free 14 day trial of a sales funnel system here, plus get your first 30 days of an email autoresponder for free here!
Certainly, I just scratched the surface here about how to get the word out on your mission statement and your business, so you may also want to check out my post 9 Online Marketing Investments I Wish I Made Sooner to learn more about the process.
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