Refreshing Your Mission, Vision, and Values

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So when we're coming up with these episodes, just so you guys know a little bit of the behind the scenes, we're always thinking about, okay, what are we talking about with our clients? what's on their minds? What are the conversations that we're having, with all the coaches, right?

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What's the difference between mission and vision and then values? You know, we see a lot even on websites, companies will. Have values listed on their website, and then you're thinking, how do they choose these? I don't feel this way about that organization at all. are you actually living the values of your organization?

And obviously this is important internally and externally, so your clients. And your team members should all be feeling, that you are, living your mission, vision, values. And so that's what we're gonna talk about today. Michelle's done a lot of work around this with many of her clients.

In fact, a few, even gone and done a training. Michelle it takes some time to actually get this stuff right. It's not something that you can, get into a room and do in an hour. It takes some thought.

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That's the most important part of those three, because those cascade down into your organization to serve the mission. So if you don't have them in front of you, press

pause,

go get them, and let's get started.

This is some tough love coaching right here, so get. ready..

Well, you know, it's funny you say that because it's one of the first thing I do, right? I'm one of the culture coaches here. And it's one of the first steps, we take when we start our coaching together. It's really taking a look at the vision, the mission, the values. Are they what you want 'em to be?

If they're not, there's no point moving forward if those aren't locked down. So that actually happened with a few of my clients. They had them because it was an older company, they'd been in business for hundreds of years. When they thought about the workforce and all the changes that have happened and what younger people are really interested in today, andthat reminds me of a, Simon Sinek, quote.

Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first. the employees today, that generation, they wanna belong to something that they connect with. And have a passion for. So this is a way for you to showcase as the company what your vision is for the future, what your mission is in terms of what you do every day, and then the values that support that.

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We should be, creating something that we want to use that people can actually. Feel that they get excited about being part of, they don't wanna just look at the values and, say, I have to actually live these values. No, they do automatically because of the culture of the organization.

Because everyone there kind of already has that, and this is why it's so important when it comes to hiring, when everyone in the organization is living the values, it's easy to hire and find cultural fits because it's very clear. Do they. Have the same value system that we do. And that's why I think with organizations or companies that we really, enjoy and appreciate, you can tell they're living values because think about, customer service people.

When you're on the phone with someone, how often are you on the phone with someone and they clearly just wanna get off the phone with you, their whole job is like, I just need to get on the phone. Try to solve your issue and then get off the phone with you as quickly as possible. I really don't want to hear your sob stories of why this didn't work out for you, but then you have someone that's like,

I'm gonna help you. we've probably all been on the phone with someone who's like, you know what? I'm not supposed to do this, but Let me do this thing for you. Or let me just check or let me make this right. And that person, you can tell they really care about their role because they care about the people that they're on the phone with.

And you feel that when you walk into an organization, you feel that when you're on the phone with someone, you feel that when someone's talking about their work. Let's stop talking about, let's dig into it, Michelle. 'cause you've got some, really great structured system and process to help people identify that vision, mission, and values.

So let's go. You have some questions to dig into. So now people have, gotten their, mission, vision, values, it's in front of them. And what do we need to do? Let's take

that step.

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What do you believe in and why do you care? What does the world need more of? what problem are you solving for the greater good? what are you inspiring to change? What's the impact you wish to have on your clients community and humanity? So this is bigger vision's, bigger, how will you improve the lives of others your employees lives?

So those are some of the questions to think about when you're reflecting on your vision of what you have today. Should be aspirational. It's not something that you know, you're going to achieve a year from now or two years from now. This is big. Dream big. Whether you're, a small company, medium sized company, large company, and there's some really good, vision examples.

So one that I really liked a lot is Lego. And Lego. Actually, I picked them for all three. As an example, their vision is a global force of learning through play. Super simple,

but that's their vision

for their company

How fun is that? and then another example is Shopify, It's make commerce better for everyone. So businesses can focus on what they do best, build

and

sell their products.

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concise, and aspirational because it's like they are doing that with their product today, but there's so many ways to do it in the future. that's the vision. And it's also super aspirational, especially in the, tech world with so much going on and who's to say what, where we'll be and how that company will transform over the years.

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A lot of companies don't have vision out there. They'll have mission and values and the vision statement you could tell really didn't, get a lot of attention because vision and mission should also click together, So that's

vision.

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And Google it. There are so many great examples. So you can actually go and find different companies and find vision statements that others are using so that your team can have some idea of, Hey, what, could ours be? Let's look at some of the ones we really like and we really appreciate What companies do we really resonate with and why?

And that will help answer some of those questions.

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and I would love to have you email me and tell me how you've changed or, how this impacted you in some way. gave your,team a, real refresh

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Your customers should know your mission and your vision, but more importantly your people should really know the mission. So when you get off this podcast today, call five of your people and ask them what the mission is. What is your mission of your company? And this is really a great exercise because if they can't tell you, then you have a great opportunity to, really firm it up.

So some of the questions, to consider when you're looking at your mission statement is, what do we do and who do we serve? How do we serve them? How do they benefit from what we give them? Who do you serve? Who's your ideal group of customers?

And what do you provide for them? Or what is the main pain you solve for your customers? So in essence, why should they want a relationship with you? Because remember, that's what it's about. It's your employee's relationships with you, it's your customer's relationship with you. Your mission should drive both of those things in a very positive and powerful way.

and what manner does your organization deliver this? How does your customer's life, job, state change as a result of your work? So get really clear about this mission and that will help drive your culture. So all the other steps in the culture solution. Don't go there until you have this nailed down.

That's my advice, And for some people they have a pretty good mission statement, but it's, I call it a tongue tire, right?You gotta really wordsmith it down and that's hard. had one client, it took him six months.

but when he locked in, it is amazing what happened. everybody knows the mission. He doesn't have to put it up on the wall to remind everybody. He has now permeated it into the organization so that people are making decisions based on the mission. If they come to a problem, they say, well wait.

What's the best way to serve our mission? What are the options for that? It's a very powerful part of building that dynamic culture.

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I love that quote. I would've written a shorter note. I just didn't have the time. It's the same thing with the mission statement, It's

like you have to answer all these questions and you're going to come up with so many different things. But then how do you pair it so it's so simple. I always think about, TED talks their mission, spread ideas.

That is the mission of ted. and that is what they do. And everyone knows that, You can remember that's what's so important. I remember years ago I worked for an organization andwe had a consultant come in and help us with the vision and, the mission statements.

And this mission statement, Michelle was so long no one could memorize it. And then we put it on the back of our business cards and still even on the back of our business cards. No one could remember it. It was just too wordy. it didn't feel personal. It didn't feel relatable.

It felt like very stuffy. I'll have to go back and find it. But it just felt like that business jargon, it didn't feel like,

spread ideas or, sharing happiness I mean, there's so many great examples of mission statements.

LinkedIn has a good mission statement that is like a one sentence thing. It's like connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. boom, that is what they do.

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It's memorable. So if vision is aspirational, mission is inspirational. And you actually picked one of my examples. Ted talks

I picked four mission statements that I wanted to share as examples. so TED Talks, spread ideas, foster community, and create impact. That's their mission. Tesla, I love this one because they make a play out words, and I just, love that, Tesla is accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy.

Not hard to understand life is good, which I love their whole story of how they came to be, but their mission is to spread the power of

optimism.

who wouldn't wanna work for life is good.

last but not least, and this is a classic, but I thought that this was important because you could tell that they chose their words.

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Inform and inspire people through the power of storytelling. I don't think they had those other pieces in there, so they've added them over time. So another great reason to, put something in your calendar to check your, mission statement every once in a while because it's about today.

It's what you're doing today and the way the world is changing so quickly. The workforce has changed so much. Keep an eye on it and make sure that it's relevant. It's relevant to what you're doing today and where you are

in your organization.

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Like technology and maybe develop new products or services, all of that stuff is going to change. But the core mission is gonna remain the same. I look at Matthew Kelly, Matthew is kind of his own brand and like from the first time that he wrote a book, he's all about helping people become the best version of themselves.

That is hisquote unquote mission, And everything that he's done, all the businesses that he's created, all the content that he creates, all the things that he does, supports helping people become the best version of themselves. that is so crystal clear.

like your personal mission statement. And when you have a personal mission statement, then it's even easier to find an organization you wanna work with. 'cause those mission statements should be very similar.

That's the beautiful piece about it too. So,

there is actually a chapter in the culture solution around your brand. maybe we'll dig into one of those for a coaching session. Michelle?

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Andwhen you start to think about your mission, your purpose, your values, and how they connect to the company and what you want them to be. some people, they're in a job or in a place where they really are not a match, and they know it. They know something's wrong and that's not quite right.

if they do that work, they see very clearly that's not a match. So that's a great segue to values.

So talking about values, core values, this is my favorite part of the three, because it's easy for them. Typically to say, here are my values. Commitment, respect, integrity, honesty.

Great. There's a million values that you could set out. I'd say first we recommend never have more than 10. You want this to be just as memorable, if not more. Then your mission statement. So I always recommend around five. If you could do three, that's great. If you can do, six or seven, that's okay.

However, just like the mission statement, really hone it down. What are the most, important behaviors that you wanna see or observe within your organization? the values are the soul of the organization. So sit down and really think about whatever values you have written on that paper.

Just forget about 'em. Think about today. Think about what is happening. What behaviors do you want to see? What do you want to reinforce? ' Because once you lock in those values, then that can cascade down to so many other things. For instance, they should be part of your job descriptions Scorecards, you should be talking about them all the time.

because most of the people problems fall under behaviors. It's not what people are doing, it's how they're doing it. So those are the biggest employee problems, if you can get this right, and you are always reinforcing what you're expecting in terms of behaviors that align with the values of your company, you'll have the most dynamic culture ever.

So here are some questions to define your core values. What behaviors increase or decrease the organization's chances of success? What are the desired behaviors? So you have the words. commitment. What does commitment mean? What does that mean to you? What do you have to see? To recognize that someone has commitment.

You need to be specific. If I was gonna rate you on your level of commitment, it's a scale of one through five, and I rate you a three, I need to know what do you need to see from me to become a four? what are you not seeing?

For me to be a five, So really think about what are those specific behaviors you wanna see from someone with each one of those values that you've identified? How do you want your customers to feel when they interact with your team? Same thing.

Your example of calling in for customer service. How do you want them to end that call? How do you want them to feel? So really digging into those values and making sure that they reflect what you really want

people to be like.

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And so pairing them down, this doesn't mean. That all of these other values that are not included on your list, it doesn't mean that we don't care about them. It doesn't mean that we don't appreciate them. It doesn't mean that they are not valuable to the people that you're working with. What we're trying to get down is the most important things, that's what these questions are gonna help you do what a lot of leaders are struggle with is we have this all or nothing mentality.

We think if all the values that I want to see in someone are not included in the core values, then they're null and void like people are gonna run rampant. No. If you pick the right five, let's say

the other ones you would've put on the list are automatically. Going to be living in, your people. that's the way that it is. And so we want our people to really be living those key values, which is why it's so important to get those key values right.

And this goes back, to that, Hey, I would've written a shorter note. I just didn't have the time. when you're going through these questions with your team, let yourself put down every single value that is important to each of them. And you're gonna come up with a long, long list.

And then you get to do that exercise of, okay, which ones kind of are similar, and then which ones can we really, remove? 'cause it's not as important as we might think, And then you're gonna have an easier time coming up with those five and feeling good about not including some of the ones that,

might not be the key values that you're looking for within the people that you're hiring.

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respect why. So it gives you another way to really assess, are these the right values? Why aren't you seeing them? Is it a leadership problem? Is it a people problem? It just really, helps to, assess your organization and really create that compass of where you wanna be with your culture.

So I have some examples. some of them are words, but some of them were actual statements. I like the statements also because they're a little more,active. So Facebook, focus on impact, move fast, be bold, be open, build social value.

So those are theirs. so Slack ended up with just the words, empathy, courtesy, thriving, craftsmanship, playfulness, and solidarity. Then Whole Foods Now they used sentences. So it doesn't matter how you wanna present these, as long as you can explain to anybody in your company what it means to, observe that value.

what behaviors do I have to demonstrate that you feel that I am, doing that value. So Whole Foods, I'll just, mention a couple. We sell the highest quality natural and organic foods. We satisfy and delight our customers. We promote team member growth and happiness. they used sentences as their values.

this Atlassian, which very interesting. got a little more bold. Open company. No BS. Build with heart and balance, play as a team and be the change you

seek.

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what does excellence mean? We practice safety. We promote quality in ourselves and those we provide care to. We create a positive and lasting impression. We strive to be healthy role models and live a balanced life. So if you just take those four statements and you stack them underneath excellence, you could actually have a conversation with any employee and say

Do you do this? Yes or no? That starts to give you a real sense of whether these values are permeating

within the organization

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a five and then you know what those values are.

And I think what's interesting for leaders is we get to use those values and give the examples of how we're seeing behaviors you get to even encourage your team members to speak up and share, Hey, you know, I really appreciated that John lived the value of.

This because this is what happened with, one of our customers and this is how we handled it. And it was really beautiful. And it just goes back to the values. And so when we are continuously sharing the examples of how people are living those values now they come to life. Now they're just not words on a page.

They are actually how we're living them because we're talking about it and we're talking about the things that we're doing every day that support those values. And not only that, but why it's important. I feel like sometimes we get so lost we have to have the mission statement and the vision statement and the values, and they're good and we feel good about them, and now they're up on the wall.

But like we don't. leverage them, we don't use them. And that's the whole purpose of having this stuff is to use them to help your culture, to help your people. think about when we're living these values, how does that impact a person's life? Not only professionally, but personally?

they're becoming a better person, right? The values that you have within the organization now They live those values outside of you start seeing them develop those skills in their kids and in their, coworkers and in their friends. this is what we get to do.

We get to impact people. And that's why, this stuff is so important. It's not just to have, so you say, yep,check, check, mission, vision, values.

No. It's like you're really using this to really support the growth of the organization and the growth of your people, which is what leaders are there to do.

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the guiding light,

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You look to that mission, you go back to the mission, vision, values and make sure, that those things are, on point so that you're moving in the right direction, you're growing the organization. Your people are growing. And you're accomplishing great things together. That's what it's all about.

Yep, no doubt. and it's a process, and it's a system like anything else, but we can help guide you through that.

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done.

So that's what we do.

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You won't be disappointed.

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there is a lot with this mission, vision, values, and so, we really do challenge you to take these questions, even send this episode to your team so they can listen to it, so that when you actually do have these conversations with them and you start asking these questions, there's a little bit more context around it.

So people feel really excited to explore and dig into these ideas and really understand why it's important, especially your team. Sometimes our team members think, oh, here we go. We're just doing things to do them. And so when we get to really explain the why behind why we're doing this and why it's in important for them, what's in it for them, that's important for us to dive into as well.

and of course, if you're interested in. Talking a little bit more about this, talking through this and getting some culture coaching, some guidance from one of our coaches. We would love to talk to you about what that would look like.

you can listen to some other episodes that Michelle has been on because she's great at digging into some of the actual conversations we have with. these leaders and CEOs. And so those are the conversations that she's having on these calls with clients and, making a real big impact in their organization and the leaders.

And so we'd love to talk to you about what coaching would look like, for you and some of your team members. we've obviously seen a lot of, impact, a lot of growth from people. I mean, it's just the most amazing thing when we hear the stories from people who feel like they're becoming better leaders.

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and we would love to hear if you did structure your vision, your mission, your values, send us an email info@floydcoaching.com. We would love to hear, how this exercise impacted you and your team. And, we would love to see some of the, mission statements and vision statements that you guys are coming up with.

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