Are your vision, mission and values a real reflection of your business or just ‘buzz words’?

Your vision mission and values are not just meaningless words to throw around thoughtlessly. They should inspire you, promote confidence and be believable to you and your team. The words are important and while they can be exciting, and should be in fact, they need to be the heart of what your business stands for, writes Sunil Kumar, author of From the Ground Up, 7 principles for building a business fast.

A lot of organisations have these statements just for show, they hardly pay any attention to them, or promote them to the team or their clients.

At Reliance, I remember when we first started working on our vision and mission, we had a workshop of 45 team members, we gave them questions recommended by our branding specialist. After the two-and-a-half-hour workshop, we collected the suggestions. We appointed six team members from various departments of the business, who worked further to put the suggestions together and define our core team and client values based on the suggestion from our team and our purpose for our team and for our clients. In the final session, we brought the team together and showed them the results that came out of their work by putting all of it together.

When we created our words, they were an authentic reflection of our people and what they believed in for themselves and for clients. Here they are:

• Our Vision – Top 3 real estate agents in all markets we serve
• Purpose/Mission- Enabling people to fulfil their dreams
• Values- Family, ownership, ethical and fun.

Vision is not set and forget

Vision, mission and values are not set and forgotten. It is continuing to work with your team to keep them aligned for purpose.

If your after more buy-in from your team try these 7 steps

1. Start your team on the right foot: make your vision, values & mission a core part of your onboarding so every team member who starts is introduced well in advance.
2. Make your vision values and purpose a part of your daily language: the language you speak should refer to your vision, mission and values. Share your vision and mission on any occasion you get. You cannot share it enough. Have it part of your language when communicating with your team. Live by those values and relate your discussions to the purpose of the organisation.
3. Display management: You need to have your vision, mission and values displayed in prominent high vis areas, where teams pass them daily. They may be placed above the printer, or located in a communal area, like the kitchen, or in the boardroom, so they are visible to the teams and clients, even next to the front reception. In the beginning when we designed our vision, mission and values, we had small pocket cards made up for the team. This was for the team to keep with them and next to their computers.
4. On a quarterly basis, have a reward or recognition aligning with your core values. At our organisation, on a quarterly basis, we have recognition for who is the best person living by individual values around our teams and client values
5. Make your vision and values part of your presentation to your clients. Your team presents to clients on every proposal and promises based on the values and purpose of organisation. We at Reliance have our values purpose & mission as part of our every presentation so our client to get to hear about it and our team stay align with it.
6. When creating your roadmap for the business, ensure you reference your business goals and priorities, build on achieving company’s mission focus your values to ensure good transmission between teams, which will always result in happy & high performing teams

Living by core values should reflect in your actions and should lead you to achieving your vision, mission effectively through daily or weekly focus. We bring them to life and give them meaning and they truly become a part of your business philosophy, representing who you are, what you stand for and where you’re going.

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