Vision and Values

How do you go about setting a clear vision for your team or organisation? This is what we're going to be talking about today on How to Lead, the podcast for CEO, founders and leaders who want the perfect balance of empathy and authority. I'm Kate Waterfall Hill and I'll be sharing some ideas from over 30 years of working in business and leadership development.

Don't forget if you want to stop screaming into your pillow every time you think about team management and you'd like to learn how to become a better leader, sign up to my free weekly newsletter. So let's kick off with Linda's way of launching the company's values. Linda being my alter ego on social media who inspires us to great leadership by showing us just how not to lead.

Over to Linda.

“Hello, I'm delighted to be announcing our new company values today. So I'm just going to run through them and then I'll take some questions from the floor. So the five values that we're announcing today are the following. Uniqueness, excellence, courage, stewardship and resourcefulness. I'm sure you'll join me in congratulating the values committee team for a really, really great set of values that we will all live and breathe in our everyday lives as we work for this company.

Any questions? What do they mean? Yeah, good question. Um, uniqueness. Well, we're all various different shades of unique, aren't we? Although some are more unique than others, I'd say. Excellence. Uh, not just doing our best, but being the best. Courage to make brave decisions, but not taking too many risks. I don't want to be stupid.

Um, and stewardship. Yes, supervising how we manage our natural resources. Although we don't have any environmental policy plans to get to net zero, or doing anything that vaguely contributes towards sustainability, but it's a good buzzword to have, I think. Yeah. And resourcefulness, because we do hard things, but we don't moan about them, do we Alice?

No. Anyway, let's get on with our working lives and just remember to be unique, excellent, courageous, stewardy, and resourceful. Wonderful. Congratulations once again to the values team. Very good.”

Oh dear, oh dear. She makes a hash of it, doesn't she? Mind you, the Values Committee didn't really come up with terribly good values. So let's work out how to do it. You might be wondering, why is setting a vision so important anyway? Well, think of your vision as the North Star for your team or organisation.

It's what guides you and the team, keeping everyone aligned and focused on the same long term goals. Today we'll explore the difference between Vision and mission, why having a set of organizational values is crucial, and how to effectively share and embed these into your organization's culture. All really important and complex issues I'm going to try and cram into 10 minutes.

So, let's start by clarifying the difference between vision and mission. Though they're often used interchangeably, purposes. So, vision. Vision Statement is a forward looking declaration of where you want your organisation to be in the future. It's aspirational and serves as a sort of source of inspiration and direction.

Think of it as the destination on your organisational roadmap. The Mission Statement, on the other hand, defines your organization's purpose and primary objectives. It's about what you do, who you do it for, and how you do it. It's the day to day work that moves you towards that vision. So I've got some examples here.

I've lent on my old friend ChatGPT to come up with some examples for you. to ChatGPT, Google's vision is to provide access to the world's information in one click. The mission of Google, though, is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

So you see the subtle difference. I'll say it again. The vision is to provide access to the world's information in one click. The mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. So, now that we've defined vision and mission, let's talk about the importance of organisational values.

Because values are the principles and beliefs, you know, that sort of inner felt values. thing that guides your organisation's behaviour and decision making. They form the foundation of your company culture. They're just how you live and breathe. So the importance of organizational values can't be overstated.

Having a set of values that people really genuinely believe in and that the leadership demonstrates every day, that's an important part of it, can really work wonders, but only if they're truly embedded in your culture. So here's how to make them effective. First of all, you've got to define them. Make sure they're clear and authentic.

Your values should be clear, concise, and real. They need to reflect what's truly important to your organization and really resonate with the team. So I'd really urge you to avoid generic buzzwords. You know, be specific about what you stand for. Secondly, you've got to communicate it well. Once you've defined your values, communicate them clearly and frequently.

Incorporate them into onboarding processes, internal communications, everyday interactions. It shouldn't just be a, you know, here's a PowerPoint presentation at a town hall and that's the last you hear of it. Your team should know the values by heart and understand how they apply to their work every single day.

Thirdly, really important, lead by example. As a leader, you've just got to embody your organization's values. Your actions should consistently reflect your stated principles. When leaders live the values, it sets a really powerful example for the rest of the organization. And I have to say, when they don't live the values, it really shows.

And people just don't buy into them, don't believe them, and don't think they're authentic. Fourth, integrate the values into policies and practices. So embed your values into your company's policies, procedures, and practices. That includes performance evaluations, reward systems, all your decision making processes.

When values are woven into the fabric of the organization, they become more than just words on a wall. But it's also really important that you live them day to day. So if you have a policy of, say diversity, equity and inclusion, brilliant, put that in a policy, but then make sure you live and breathe it.

So there isn't any, you know, what's described as office banter. Which is non inclusive. So make sure there's a mechanism for people to say, Hey, do you know what? I felt really uncomfortable with that chat at lunchtime. I don't want to raise the grievance. I don't want to go to HR. I don't want to go to the CEO.

I just want to tell somebody it made me feel uncomfortable and know that somebody's going to do something about it and that I'm not going to be in trouble for being of some sort of troublemaker. So these things are really important as well. It's got to be in the policies, but it's also got to be in the way you live.

So just to summarise those, you've got to define them, make sure they're clear and authentic, these values, communicate them well, you've got to lead by example, and you've got to integrate the values into your everyday life and your policies and procedures. So, Going back to Google, the vision was to provide access to the world's information in one click.

The mission was to organise the world's information to make it universally accessible and useful. And then the values of these is quite a few, so bear with me. Focus on the user and all else will follow. It's best to do one thing really, really well. Fast is better than slow. Democracy on the web works.

I'm not going to read out the rest of them, but basically you get the idea. They've got some really meaningful phrases that aren't just. buzzwords. I like this one. You can be serious without a suit.

There's always more information out there. I'm really quite sure what that means in terms of a value, but you know, we'll let them have it. Next, let's try Amazon. This is what ChatGPT had to say about them.

Their vision is to be Earth's most customer centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online. The mission is to continually raise the bar of the customer experience by using the internet and technology to help customers find, discover, and buy anything, and empower businesses and content creators to maximise their success.

Their values, to my mind, a little bit more buzzwordy, customer obsession, ownership, invent and simplify, learn and be curious, hire and develop the best, think big, Yeah, not, you know, not my favourite, but I can, I get the point Microsoft vision to help people and businesses throughout the world realise their full potential.

Their mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more and their values. Innovation, diversity and inclusion, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy, environmental sustainability and trustworthy computing. Whether or not you agree that they actually do live by these values is up to you, but perhaps it's worth you researching some businesses or organisations that you respect and think, what do they do?

What's their vision, mission and values? So how this translates to people's real lives is the key. And this is the job of all leaders. To bring the vision to life and make sure it means something to every member of the team or organisation. I've said it before, but the most important aspect of being a great leader is to set out the purpose of the organisation, the team or the task at hand.

Everyone likes to have a sense of purpose, a reason for them being there, their contribution, how they add value. This is the leader's primary function in my book. You might well know the story of JFK's 1962 visit to NASA, but it's just such a great one, I'm going to tell it again, just in case you've forgotten.

Picture the 1960s, during the height of the Apollo program, NASA was laser focused on the audacious mission of landing a man on the moon. The atmosphere was electric with the determination that every scientist, engineer, administrator, and astronaut was working with a shared belief in that dream. And one day, this John F.

Kennedy visited NASA's headquarters to meet the team making this mission a reality. And as he was leaving, he crossed paths with one of the janitors. Curious, JFK asked him, what's your role here? I would have thought it was fairly obvious he was probably, you know, holding a broom and wearing a overall.

But anyway, the janitor's answer was, I'm helping to put a man on the moon. Now think about that. You know, this is really someone who role might have seemed insignificant to an outsider, nice of JFK to speak to him. But in his eyes, the janitor's eyes, he was part of something bigger. His work was directly connected to NASA's larger purpose.

And he saw himself. As part, as a vital part of the mission. That's the power of a shared vision. When a leader helps their team understand the bigger picture, everyone feels like they're playing a crucial part, no matter their position.

I'm interrupting myself briefly to let you know that my new book, How to Lead, is out now. It's filled with simple, proven methods I've gathered over my 30 years as a managing director and then coach of over 200 leaders. So if you're ready for straightforward, real world approaches to leading with purpose, this book is for you.

You can grab a PDF or a Kindle version from my website or a paperback edition from Amazon. Both links are in the Now, let's get back to the show.

So let's discuss how to share and embed your vision and value successfully within your organisation.

Consistent communication. Regularly communicate your vision and values through various channels, whether it's team meetings, newsletters, company events, even social media. Consistency is key. The more you talk about them, the more they become ingrained in your team's mindset and actually in yours too.

Storytelling. If you can bring your vision and values to life through storytelling, it really helps. Sharing stories that highlight how your organisation's values have guided actions and decisions. Real life examples make abstract concepts tangible. Visual reminders. So if you can incorporate reminders of your vision and values throughout the workplace, whether it's posters, digital screens, even branded merchandise, if it's not too corny for you, can serve as a constant reminder of what your organisation stands for.

Really involve your employees in the process of defining and living your vision and values. Seek their input and feedback because when employees feel ownership, they're loads more likely to embrace and champion these principles. Recognise and reward employees who exemplify your organisation's values.

This reinforces the importance of living these values and encourages others to follow suit. Celebrating successes aligned with your vision and values helps solidify them in your organisational culture. We've covered a lot, but to wrap up, setting a clear vision and defining strong organisational values are really foundational to your organisation's success.

Your vision provides direction and inspiration while your values guide behaviour and decision making. So whether you're in charge of the whole organisation and looking at the vision and values for the whole organisation, that's one thing, but this can apply to a team leader too. So even if you've got an overall, vision and mission for your organisation, need to create an understanding within your team members of how that translates to them in their everyday lives and how that translates to them in their roles.

So everybody likes to have clarity of the overall vision. The team's mission, purpose, and the individual's purpose. Clearly, distinguish between your vision and mission is important. Define, communicate, and live by your organisational values. Consistently share and embed your values and vision through communication, storytelling, visual reminders, Employee involvement and recognition.

And by doing this, you'll create a cohesive and motivated team that's aligned with your long term goals and principles, all pushing in the same direction or with a common goal and a shared purpose. And that is so important. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of How to Lead. Please do subscribe or follow to ensure you don't miss out on future episodes.

Like, leave a review and share with your fellow leaders to help spread the word. I really do appreciate your support. Again, if you have any suggestions for future episodes, please let me know. My contact details are in the show notes. And remember, you too can enjoy being an authoritative yet empathetic leader.

It just takes a decision to be more intentional about your interactions with others. Some great tips for how to influence positive change and of course a good guide. Don't forget, listen more, advise less, lead well. See you next time.