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A performance-improvement consultant says that the best company vision takes the long view of success, can be capture in a glimpse, and doesn't frown upon rose-colored glasses.
I've been a consultant for 20 years and have seen a number of business fads come and go-or be repackaged under another name. My business cards have changed from productivity consultant to quality consultant to performanceimprovement consultant, but the work has not changed much.
One business practice that was quite common 15 years ago was strategic planning. I recall working in the early 1980s with a number of companies to help them define mission, vision, and develop strategies.
During the TQM craze that began in the late 1980s, and is still not completely dead, most organizations forgot about strategic planning. Change had become so rapid, plans often became obsolete in three months anyway, so it did not make sense to develop a plan for the next five years.
Management books said that the successful organizations of the 1990s would be the ones who adapted quickly to changes in market demands, technology, and other factors. Flexibility and responsiveness were thought to be the desired characteristics, rather than simply having good-quality products or services and a wellthought-out plan.
Just when everyone thought strategic planning was dead, it has again become a popular business practice. During the last five years, most major corporations have again started writing strategic plans.
Yet, for many, strategic planning remains a mystery. Everyone has a written strategic plan sitting in a file; most plans, however, are nothing more than a binder filled with buzzwords, flowery descriptions of future success, and hundreds of arbitrary targets.
Defining your future vision One of the keys to a good plan is that everyone understands the company's vision of where it wants to be in the future. A mission statement is present-focused and defines what you do. A vision statement is future-focused, and defines what you want to become in the next three to ten years. The mission keeps an organization focused on its key customers, products, and services, and helps when evaluating new business opportunities to make sure they fit in with the scope of the company's mission.
According to a recent survey quoted in this Journal ("Community Board,"...