On a mission for success with Beanstalk HR

A mission statement communicates the organisation’s reason for being, and how it aims to serve its key stakeholders. Often longer than vision statements, they sometimes include a summary of the organisation’s values. Mission statements answer the questions of “Who are we?” and “What does our organisation value?”

A vision statement is a future-oriented declaration of the organisation’s purpose and aspirations. The vision statement says, “based on that purpose (set out in the mission), this is what we want to become.” Strategy should flow directly from the vision, since the strategy is intended to achieve the vision and so satisfy the mission.

Typically, vision statements are relatively brief and sometimes captured in a short tag line*, such as Airbnb: “Belong anywhere”; Disneyland: “The happiest place on Earth”; and Beanstalk HR “Beanstalk let your beings talk’

*In the context of branding, a tagline is a memorable motto or phrase that’s designed to serve as a permanent expression of your company’s greater purpose and mission.

Vision statements should create a tension and restlessness — they should foster a spirit of continuous innovation and improvement. In the case of Nike’s “just do it”, coined by one of the company’s advertising agencies in 1988, it is action-oriented and urges employees to give people the tools to be active and perform better. London Business School professors Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad describe this tense relationship between vision and strategy as stretch and ambition. In their study of companies such as CNN, British Airways, and Sony, they found that these firms ‘displaced competitors with stronger reputations and deeper pockets through their ambition to stretch their organisations in more innovative ways.’

Mission and vision provide a high-level guide, and the strategy provides the specific pathway, to the goals and objectives.

Values are the beliefs of an individual, group, or organisation, in which they are emotionally invested.

They specify what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour within an organisation. They are used in decision-making as standards for what is “right” or why to prefer one alternative to another. They are often a base for codes of ethics.

Organisations often define their values, but can fall down on embedding them into the company culture and  ensuring they use them to drive decision making.

Values should drive company culture but where policies, processes and systems are not aligned, or there is no accountability, this doesn’t happen.

British anthropologist Edward Tyler coined the first (1871) modern definition of culture: “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

An organisation’s culture is the system of values, beliefs, and behaviours that shapes how work gets done—“the way things work around here” – and can be a great asset. ‘Good culture’ can improve employee attraction and retention, engagement and motivation, company reputation, adaptability, innovation and more.

Edgar Schein of MIT’s Sloan School of Management said that culture can be observed at three levels of the organisation: espoused values; artefacts – those tangible and observable elements, such as hierarchy, rules, policies and the work environment; and assumptions – a “pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”

Assumptions are often unconscious and go undefined, but are important in organisational culture. It is important for example when looking to change the culture, to identify these assumptions, which are often long embedded and accepted or taken for granted.

Espoused values are relatively easy to construct, followed by artefacts, but assumptions take much longer. Trust and safety are key. Example: An organisation looks at their vision for the future. They need to improve innovation in the workforce to get there, so write a value: ‘We freely give ideas and challenge the status quo.’ However, the current leadership style has typically meant that employees are discouraged from getting involved or giving opinions. They are not rewarded for their ideas and can face ridicule from peers and managers. So, the company can take some tangible steps towards creating a culture of innovation – employee forums, resources to support innovation skills growth, reward and recognition etc. But until the assumption that sharing ideas will be frowned upon is overridden by the opposite, a culture of innovation is unlikely to follow. Commitment from leadership to embedding behaviours that uphold the original value is vital to nurture it into reality.

Organisations with clearly communicated, widely understood, and collectively shared missions and visions have been shown to perform better than those without them, with the caveat that they are related to effectiveness if strategy, goals and objectives are aligned with them as well (Bart, et. al., 2001).

According to Deloite, organisations that actively manage their cultures typically have 30% higher levels of innovation and 40% higher levels of retention. They found that “Mission-driven” companies are poised for success with highly engaged workforces outperforming their peers by 147% in earnings per share 87% less likely to leave.

Furthermore, strong and attractive values have been shown to result in: brand and reputation enhancement; customer attraction; and employee attraction, engagement and retention. Research by LinkedIn found that 71% of professionals say they would be willing to take a pay cut to work for a company that has shared values, while 39% would leave their current job if their employer were to ask them to do something they have an ethical or moral conflict with.

Our model sets out how we work to deliver your goals.

We find out what makes you tick. If you have them defined we look at your vision, mission and values (if you don’t we can help you and your people identify them), and we keep these at the forefront of everything we do with you. Whether looking for applicants who share your vision, or conducting an absence meeting with an employee, we want you to feel safe in the knowledge that when we are acting on behalf of your business we are aligned with your values.

Quite simply your vision is Beanstalk’s mission.

Our purpose is to provide pragmatic, professional, good value people solutions tailored to your organisation; and to nurture and develop your humans to be happy and effective beans.

One of our values is “Organisational strength through entwined best people practices” – vertically aligned with top level goals and vision, horizontally aligned with organisational activities and values.

We learn about your people and your aims, and we make suggestions for work that we think will drive you towards your goals. These are based on academic research and theories in the field of people management; and best practice guidance from organisations such as the Charted Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). In particular they are focussed on achieving proven organisational success factors such as employee engagement and positive culture.

Employee engagement is a success factor on our mission model – if your employees are engaged research has shown that your organisation will be more successful …. You’re more likely to achieve your vision.

Of note is the research of David Macleod and Nita Clarke - ‘Engaging for Success’, known as the Macleod Report – commissioned by the Government in 2008 to take an in-depth look at employee engagement and to report on its potential benefits for companies, organisations and individual employees.

Macleod and Clarke found four Enablers of Engagement. Three of these – Strategic Narrative, Engaging Managers and Employee Voice – fall within our model’s Tangibles; while the fourth – Organisational Integrity – is less tangible and reflects assumptions about the way things are done in the organisation.

There are many strategies that can facilitate the achievement of these tangibles and intangibles, and the higher aim of engagement, but these will need to be tailored based on your particular mission, vision and values. While acknowledging for example that employee voice mechanisms in theory benefit the business, not all types will be suitable for all businesses, and in fact if not planned and managed properly could be detrimental.

Another success factor – organisational agility is how swiftly and smoothly the organisation adapts to change. Many businesses operate in environments of rapid change and ambiguity - some more than others. For some the agility they need is cultural; for some more career based – an ability to support flexible career paths without boundaries; for others flexibility in the business model is needed.

What sort and how much agility your business needs will be a question you answer when you think about your vision and top level goals. How you achieve it will depend on your values. Your strategy will reflect those in a road map to getting there.

Strategically there will be very little, if anything, that you do that doesn’t involve a human aspect. Want to implement a new technology strategy? – strong leadership and employee involvement will make or break success: embedding new technology through change management, skills retraining, talent acquisition etc will be crucial. This is where HR’s skills in organisational development and change management come to the fore, as well as tactical planning, and executing the operational aspects such as employee consultation forums, TUPE processes, training and development and policies and procedures.