A vision statement should only ever work for your organisation #28daysofwriting

 

Does your organisation have a high level vision statement? That's it. On page three of the strategy document no-one reads. The motto that makes everyone roll their eyes slightly. It probably involves something to do with excellence, being "the best", or caring, or striving, or something else with a similar drone. What if I suggested that you might come up with a vision statement that no-one else on the planet, no other organisation, could ever get away with using themselves?

Think about some of the great strategy or vision statements of our time. These ones are taken from my new book:

• Amazon: Every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.
  Ford: Democratize the automobile.

• Google: Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

• JFK's Moon Challenge: This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

• Microsoft: A computer on every desk and in every home.

• Disney: Be the best company in the world for all fields of family entertainment.

• Hewlett-Packard: Be one of the best managed corporations in the world.

• Sony: Embody changing the image of Japanese products as being of poor quality; create a pocket transistor radio.

Closer to home, I was lucky enough to hear the backstory to the vision statement of Linn, the world's best music player company (based in Glasgow, Scotland):

Linn makes anything you listen to at home sound better.

Let's break that down:

Linn makes (in our factory) anything (games, tv, iPad, MP3, streaming music) you listen to (Linn products are so good, and relatively expensive, that they are not the kinds of product that you would just "hear" in the background, while you do the hoovering) at home (not at the office, nightclub, restaurant) sound better (this is their major technological point of difference: reduction of loss from studio to ear)

It took Linn's MD Gilad Tiefenbrun and his team over 18 months to get to the point where they had this one sentence that helps any one member of staff, and their customers, understand precisely what they are getting, and how it is made. Every word counts. Together, they create something that is genuinely unique and exciting for all those involved in building, and listening to, the product.

What's your current vision, and how might you change it to make it unique?

Pic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cpstorm/167418602