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August 14, 2009 One of the key characteristics of top companies is that there is strong alignment between company's mission, vision and values and that of their employees. Let's examine what this really means. What is your company's mission? This question seems difficult. What is your company's purpose? This seems easier to answer. So where does purpose fit in this? My own purpose is to bring clarity to indivuals and businesses so that can they attain greater success. So to help clarify, let's say for the sake of argument that mission and purpose are essentially same things. As an example, if I was working for a widget company, their mission statement might say: "We manufacture widgets." Vision is often described as a beacon of where the business wants to go. Some people argue that it should be inspiring while others argue that there needs to be a degree of reaonableness but I believe that most important part of it is in the understanding of where the business wants to go. Let's assume these widgets are components to a larger product and this larger product is used in medical facilities. Your company's vision might be, "to a have a widget in every medical facility in Canada." On the surface, this may still be difficult for an employee to get excited about. However, once it is put in the context of how this widget contributes to the making of a megawidget and the megawidget contributes to the medical facilities success and then the importance of medical facilities, this widget company becomes a very attractive employer. The more employees know about their company's mission and vision or in more common language its purpose and what it wants to attain, the more employee's can feel connected to the business. When this concept is taken further and employee's understand how their job or job objectives are contributing to the company's purpose and what it wants to attain, the more motivated employees can be. If, for example, I was a buyer and I had job objectives such as ensuring timely delivery of quality products, I could see how my success in achieving this objective would contribute to the making of a quality megawidget in a timely manner. I would also know that this is contibuting to the success of the medical facilities. Assuming that the work that I doing aligned with my career objectives (and the company and I had similar values), there would then be very strong alignment between the company and myself.
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