Vision, Mission and Strategy Statements

Vision, mission and strategy statements of any organization must be galvanized around a core set of beliefs regarding the customers and their needs, wants and preferences if it is to be successful. The vision statement defines an organization's identity as it meets the needs of customers and strives to attain its mission. A mission statement defines the overall purpose of the organization including the priorities of product and services strategies in meeting the needs of customers.

A mission statement also serves to galvanize internal systems and processes to support overall vision of the company, including references to the core values of the business as well. Both vision and mission have a direct effect on the strategies companies choose to pursue in attaining their objectives. it's critically important for any organization to interweave and integrate these elements in conjunction with continual plans for change management, ensuring the entire organization stays in step with these elements (Stanleigh, 2008).

While vision statements vary significantly across industries and companies, those from the software industry are the most difficult to define and execute. Strategies are relied on for enabling each aspect of the vision statement to be achieved through the synchronization of efforts across the departments and divisions of the company. Vision and mission statements act as the catalysts of continuing staying vigilant to the need for change, and anchor many of the best practices in change management (Nelissen, 2008).

For any organization to stay agile, market focused and growing, it must continually work to create a mission and vision statement as relevant as possible to its customer base and their needs. 2. Statements For this example, the vision statement of Cincom Systems is to enable the transformation of complex enterprises through the use of state-of-the-art software solutions. The mission is to deliver up to thirty times the value of the software purchased back to the customer over the lifetime of their engagement.

The strategies that Cincom relies on include rapid prototyping development, alliances and program development with other software companies, and a continual technology education programs. All of these are investments in creating a business model capable of attaining the mission and vision statements of the company. When the vision and mission statements of a company align, the potential exists for much higher levels of change management effectiveness over time (Price, Chahal, 2006). 3. Statement Validation a.

From a theoretical standpoint, the value of the vision ad mission statements is that is unifies the entire company around a common direction and series of strategies. When used effectively, it can also galvanize an organization around a common set of values, making continual change management more effective and accomplishable over time (Price, Chahal, 2006).

Additionally, the greater the alignment of mission, vision and strategic direction, the greater the level of willingness on the part of employees to change as their organizations require them to, they are collaborators in the change (Oakland, Tanner, 2007). b. Vision, mission and strategy all drive change in the organization by setting a foundation of mutual understanding and insight into why change is necessary to begin with.

The greater the change required within any organization the higher the level of trust needed to make all the changes necessary for growth permanent (Oakland, Tanner, 2007). Any organization can create vision, mission and value statements, in addition to strategies to drive change, yet the most successful ones all center on how to bring the people involved in making these initiatives successful into the equation or overall strategy (Nelissen, 2008).

Creating greater levels of trust throughout an organization is a prerequisite for the effective use of vision and mission statements over the long-term.