Last week, I wrote about employee ROI, and the responsibility and importance for each employee to be aware and maximize their contribution to employer success. The question is ‘how do employees know what is valuable to their employer?’
The principal source of guidance for every employee is their manager. It is a manager’s responsibility to coach, advise, and guide their team to success, and study after study of employee retention finds that the key factor in why an employee decides to leave or stay with an employer is their relationship with their manager. However, it is one thing to make a friendly work environment, and quite another thing to instill a sense of purpose and build belief in the direction of the company. Employees who believe in the company remain with the company.
What binds the whole business together is a shared understanding of how all of the teams and roles fit together, and a sense of culture and purpose that is driving the entire company toward a common goal. When employees see the big picture, they can assess how they are contributing and delivering ROI. To achieve this, the company needs an explicit statement of Mission, Vision, and Values (MVV). It is perhaps the most important role for the CEO to lead the process to develop a clear statement and shared understanding of the corporate MVV, and to repeat it over and over to all employees.
I am an advocate of a concise, aspirational mission statement. I read that Steve Jobs believed a mission statement should be so clear and concise that if you wake an employee in the middle of the night and ask them what it is, they will have no trouble stating the mission. When I joined one company, I went looking for a mission statement, and I found three completely different documents. Each one was over a page long, and each was prominently displayed on different employee systems. Nobody knew which one was current, or what they actually said. Having more than one statement was a problem, but the bigger problem was that nobody was paying attention. The mission statements had a lot of boilerplate words that provided no guidance. We have all seen the typical statements that go on for paragraphs about “being the best in the world at doing a specific thing that somebody cares about… blah, blah, blah.” In my example, we re-wrote the three different bland statements into a clear seven word mission, and everyone got it.
The often quoted saying ‘I would have gladly written you a shorter note if I only had the time’ is at the heart of a bad mission statement. Take the time! Mission statements are grand declarations that can, and should, be crafted in under 10 words. They provide team members with clarity, and a roadmap to determine if their contribution is furthering the mission (core), or secondary to the mission (context).
The second problem with bad mission statements is the dreaded conjunction: “and.” Frogs have very simple vision systems. When they see a bug wiggling in front of them, they strike with their tongue to eat the bug. The problem is when they see two bugs wiggling on the right and the left side. Their simple brain averages the two and they strike in the middle. The result is no food to survive. Similarly, a test for a bad mission statement is to look for a conjunction in the wording - “we are going to do this AND that.” The conjunction shows that there are really two missions, and there is no common-ground that encompasses both objectives. Think of a company like the frog, and when the mission has a conjunction, it is like having a bug on both sides. If employees ‘strike’ in the middle, their contribution is lost.
The second critical element is the Vision Statement. The Mission Statement is what you want to accomplish; the Vision Statement is how you will accomplish it. The Vision Statement is a bit longer, and more specific about the strategy and where the company will invest to achieve its mission. This is where a team member can gauge how their role fits into the corporate direction. As an example, if the vision is to become a pure product company, and your role is to deliver bespoke services, you may be out of sync with where the company is headed.
Lastly, a company needs a clear statement of values. The Value Statement defines who we are and how we behave. It is the moral compass for the team. Managers should measure employees with the core corporate values in mind, and employees should consider their ROI in the context of their adherence to the corporate values. Even a productive employee is of diminished value if they are a cultural misfit. This is sometimes described as the ‘no asshole’ rule. A good test is to determine if the employee is someone people want to work with, or someone they intentionally work around. Values help frame what a good employee looks like. I strongly believe that developing the value statement should be a broad collaborative effort. Everyone has a role to play in building a shared understanding of how the team will work together to achieve the vision and mission.
With a strong and concise MVV, employees can determine how their role is contributing to success, and if they are in synch with the corporate culture. A clear MVV gives managers the tools to help employees grow consistently with where the company is headed so they maximize their employee ROI.