Bob Woodward, author of "Aligned Yellow Bricks", responds to the importance of mission, vision, and value statements in the July 26, 2005, edition of CIO magazine, Beneath the Buzz.
Strategic Vision - A leadership mandate:
In its simplest form, a strategic roadmap is nothing more than a plan (vision) that is dovetailed with the associated charter of activities and resources needed to fulfill the plan’s goal (mission). It is the unification of activities with purpose.
Aligning the mission with the vision is strategic to achieving successful results. Defining, communicating, and reinforcing the organizational vision, and then aligning the structure of resources necessary to successfully complete the activities of its mission, is the primary and ongoing responsibility of organizational leadership. Without that direction, all activities undertaken by the organization are suspect.
The foundation for a strategic roadmap is built on the answers to four basic questions:
1) What are the primary goals of the organization? 2) Has the organizational structure been aligned to effectively execute the actions necessary to achieve those goals? 3) Have balanced metrics been defined to measure and integrate the aligned actions necessary to achieve those goals? 4) Does the reward system create the incentives necessary to spur those appropriate actions?
The answers to these four questions become the basis for creating the structural alignment between strategic goals and the organization tasked to achieve them.
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