De Business Works: Your Vision vs. Your Mission, 29 abr 2018

Most small business people especially, and professional practices, have a tendency to think that vision and mission are the same thing.

Mission is where you want to go over a given period of time. It's almost like stating your goal. “Where we're going this year. What's happening right now? How you're going to get to where you're going.”

Vision is how you see yourself in five years, ten years, twenty years.

Vision embodies is things like your core values as a company. How are we going? What are we going to hold true to like, as a company, the things that you really feel is important? What are you going to focus on? What kind of work are you going to go after? What kind of clients are you going to try to attract? 

Because if you have clients who are only interested in one thing, and that's the lowest price, and you're not able to deliver the lowest price, then you shouldn't talk to that client. You shouldn't waste time with that client because you're never going to get them.

So the idea is to try to find people that fit with your niche and with your focus and your core values so that your time is well spent and you don't end up losing a lot of opportunities because you're spending your efforts on people that are never going to trade with you or come to you or use you as a doctor or professional.

You can't have a company that does quality work unless you have quality people. In other words, if I've got people working for me who don't really care about doing the right thing, who don't really care about putting out quality work and leaving a good reputation individually with a client, there's no way I'm going to be able to create a company that's known for that with people that aren't known for that.

It's like that old example we used in construction. 

“There are three brick masons and you're walking along the road and you ask the first one, what are you doing? He said, I'm just laying brick.

That's all I'm doing. The second one, what are you doing, sir? I'm building a wall.

It's a part of a building. I'm just building a wall. And the third one says, Oh, sir, we are creating a wonderful cathedral here for this community.

This is going to be a place of weddings and funerals and all kinds of important events of this whole created area. And they have a vision for what they're doing that's important and they have pride in that. And that's so much different than the first example of a guy who's just laying bricks.”

Recognition & appreciation 

The number one thing that people are looking for in their job, once they have enough money for food, clothing and shelter, the number one thing they want out of their job is recognition and appreciation.

Because it allows you then to take people and put them in the right seats, and have the right people in those seats. And by doing that, you end up with a successful company, where everybody is thinking like an owner.

Recognition and appreciation don't have to take the form of a salary increase.

You can reward people much better when you have a sense of what's important to them. If you give them an experience, we would give TV sets or clocks or trips, then every time they see that clock, they're going to remember it was free or that TV set.

If you have a good vision that you've really put some time into and you know where you want to go, and everybody in the leadership team and the company is on board with that vision, they're all following it.

They're all buying into it. And then you've got the right people in the right seats. Then the data will make apparent to you throughout the company where all your issues are and where all your warts are.

“Vision embodies your core values, which are what define your culture. And no two companies have the same. And your vision has to be something that's uniquely you.

It's what you attract. It's the values or what attract people to your organization, how you hire and fire and review and reward and recognize people. And these core values are key to the vision.

Your vision needs to be something easily understood by the employees, simplified in a way that they can call that to their minds as they're going through the day-to-day operations of the company, and not be so complex that they can't remember all the valid points of the mission and vision.

If you have a vision and you don't have a traction toward that vision, you are absolutely just hallucinating.

Is that momentum then?

It's traction is how you're going to get there. And so when I coach companies, I coach them to decide the how before they decide their vision. Because it doesn't matter what your vision is, if you don't have a plan to get there, you're not going to make it.

The word suggests digging in, digging the wheels into the road kind of or something.

Yeah, it's like identifying your issues and how you're going to resolve those issues. We have a plan called IDS, where you identify, you discuss, and then you solve the issue problem. You don't just keep bringing them up, talking about them, talking about them.

You bring them up one time and you solve them and that's it. Sometimes it requires that you put in place a new process in your company, so that the same issue doesn't keep coming up. You could be doing business the wrong way.

You had mentioned to me during the break about core values and core focus. Can you explain how that relates to this?

Sure. The thing about vision is it's usually in people's heads, especially entrepreneurs. But it's very good to get that vision out of your heads and on paper, and to really start communicating that both externally to your market, but internally to your employees.

Because if they don't believe in the vision, you get the wrong people.

“everybody in the company, 100% of the people in the company, should buy into and support the vision of the company. If you have somebody working for you that does not buy into your vision, they could be so detrimental to the company because they're hurting your culture and the vision that creates the culture.

So back to your question, the difference between vision, core vision and core focus, these core, excuse me, core values and core focus, the values are the things that are characteristic of your vision. The core focus would be those things that are uniquely your company. For instance, if you had, core focus is what you might call your company's sweet spot.

It could be a mission statement is defined by some. Stephen Covey called it a voice. The hedgehog concept was in the book, Built to Last by Collins and Porras.

But it's your unique ability as a company. And you have to agree on that and focus on that. It's your, it's what many would call your purpose, your cause, your passion as a company, your unique niche, the things that only you can do so that you have three uniques and you “and you want your customers to know that if they want all three of those items, they gotta come to you.

So try to find the things in your marketplace that you can do better than anybody else. And if you can get three of them, then you really give yourself a head start over your competition. And they also are filtering guiding mechanism for your company, because you do not want to be able to get distracted by shiny stuff that's out there.”

“We call it shiny stuff.

What do you mean by that?

Well, it's those items that are different from what your core focus is.”

Another thing I might mention here is that it's important in your communicating to do like good parents do. You've got to have a simple message to your children, and you have to repeat it seven times before they hear it. And so, doing that, we always say it's like being consistent and persistent.

If you're going to be a good parent, you've got to do that. Well, it's the same with your employees. You want to get the message out there seven times, keep talking about it.

It's what you hire with, it's how you fire people, it's how you reward and recognize them. And you need to wordsmith it in ways so that it's very simple for them. Because if it's not simple, they won't remember it, and it'll be difficult.

So all you wordsmiths who are listening, this is an opportunity to step up and make it happen for these businesses.

And you need to really work on a little short speech where you're humble and you create in this speech examples of where people in the company are actually using the vision, they're putting it into practice, to help people understand what that looks like when you do put it into practice.

3 uniques

So my thought is if they could understand this concept of three uniques, they ought to be identifying the three things that they do better than anybody else in their market.

services or is that what you mean?

Yeah, whether there's services better or whether products better, if you're talking about a business. But at any rate, your customers need to know those. And when you start sitting down trying to think of them, it's really tough.

It's hard. It took us a long time in our company to do that.

So we worked hard at trying to articulate what our three uniques were. One we saw was that we were able to provide both design and construction.

For instance, we guaranteed our price for two years instead of one.

Marketing

Underneath that marketing umbrella are functions of marketing which include sales, advertising, promotion, public relations, pricing, merchandising, image development, branding, networking. So, all of these things and more are part of marketing.

And we hear misrepresentations every day of that. Some people think that everything is part of sales, or everything is part of public relations. It's not.

Marketing is the umbrella. All of those other things are functions of marketing. They are ways of reaching the public and building a market base for yourself.

And the only part of sales to me that makes sense to be included under marketing is to make sure you use the same logos, the same forms, that really carry your brand all the way into the point of sale.

Well, I think it's a lot more than that in the sense that sales, the words that are used are very critical. They have to come from marketing. They have to tie in with what's in the advertising.

They have to tie in with what's in the public relations program. And speaking of that, by the way, I'll just mention that we also now, today, are doing so much stuff on line, that it's important to remember that content, what's in your approach on line in terms of words is still the king. That you can have all kinds of fancy videos and things like that on a website or in an email, and the razzmatazz doesn't do it.

It may attract attention, but it isn't going to make the sale. It's the content that makes the sale. It's the words that are used, very important.

“when you go online with written content, the words are the only thing you're using to communicate because we know that 27% of communications involves the tone of voice, and 54% is body language. We see none of that online.

That's right.

So that makes those words, since they're representing 100% of your communicating skills, you better get them right.”

How you attract, treat,  hire, fire, reward your people. The ethical behavior of your people. 

How are you going to achieve your vision. Otherwise is an ilussion. 

Consistent & persistent repeating the vision communicating vision in a simple way… how you hire, fire, reward and recognize them. 

3 uniques.

3 things we do better than others.

Functions of Marketing: ways of reaching the public and building a market base for your company.