How to stoke a compelling mission and vision so people will buy-in

Opinion piece

Creating a mission and vision is vital for your company, not only for you as a business owner to know where you should be heading but also for your employees. Ensuring that your workforce buys into your mission and vision is essential to maximizing productivity and having employees who want to come to work.

Both of these factors can help you to keep more work done for the same cost, making your business more efficient and therefore getting you to your goals much quicker.

What is a Mission?

The mission statement of a company explains ‘what’ and ‘who’ a company is, it should explain what the company stands for and why it was created. The purpose of having a mission statement is to give you something to look to when you need answers to your question.

One example of a mission statement could be to ‘make computers accessible to everybody,’ which would help to guide your decisions and to ensure that you stick to your original aims.

What is a Vision?

On the other hand, a vision is a dream of the future, which you can use to guide you and your employees to your goals. An example of vision would be ‘the world’s biggest computer company, selling products at a reasonable price that gives access to the vast majority of the world.’

This is primarily a goal for your company which you can look to ensure that the decisions and direction of your company are correct.

Being Authentic to Yourself and the Company

To stoke your mission and vision so that people will buy in you must be authentic to yourself and your company. Many people lie to themselves, creating grandiose statements that aren’t truthful and this is easy to see through for most people.

Instead, it’s vital that you are honest with yourself and choose a mission and vision that is authentic to your real hopes and dreams. Only when you do this will have created a goal that people want to join.

Use Your Mission and Vision for Decision Making

Within your day-to-day operations, it’s vital that you use your mission and vision as a method for making decisions. Doing this ensures that your business doesn’t stray because doing so will quickly disenfranchise your workforce, making them feel like your mission isn’t authentic.

By referencing these statements every day in your decision making you can keep at the front of your employee’s minds, ensuring that they too will buy in.

Keep Your Mission and Vision Visible

Presuming that you work in a physical office, it would be smart to keep your mission and vision visible throughout the workplace. Doing this shows your employees how vital those statements are to you, making it feel more authentic and therefore making it more likely that they will buy-in and join your cause.

Hire Carefully

Perhaps the best way to ensure that people buy into your statements is only to hire people who already do, but of course, this can be incredibly difficult. For this reason, companies like Google and Apple who value culture immensely can take months to make a single hire, even for low-level staff who have little impact on the direction of the firm.

Culture and fit are vital and taking the time to hire people who already believe in your cause are crucial to maintaining a workforce that cares about your mission and vision statements.

Fire Quickly

Similarly, you must be quick to fire people that fail to buy in or who become disenfranchised. Failing to do this leaves your culture open to harm and could cause a potentially dangerous environment where people quickly give up on your mission and vision.

Instead, you must keep a close eye on your workforce and be willing to let go of people who don’t fit with the culture and who fail to buy into your vision.

Mission and Visions Beyond the Company

Finally, looking at the companies which have succeeded it’s clear to see that most have missions and visions that are far beyond the scope of a single business. For example; companies like Google and Apple were founded and existed today to change the world, not just to create a company that makes their founders rich.

The reason why this is vital is that many employees today choose to work for companies not just for paychecks but because they want to have a more significant impact on the world.