Strategy, vision, mission, and values

          To answer these questions, first, we need to remember what vision and mission are. As we could read in the textbook, they help us to understand the purpose of the organization, what it wants to achieve, and what are its values. A strategy, at the same time, tells the company what to do in order to achieve its mission and vision. Everything is connected.

        Unfortunately, sometimes it happens that vision, mission, or values contradict the strategy. It can lead to several issues. First of all, mission and vision give stakeholders the information about the company – if the strategy is contradictory, it means that their expectations will not be met. In such situations, companies lose clients, employees, investors, and many other stakeholders. It can also lead to the poor job performance of the company’s employees: many people start working for the firm not only because of the salary but also because the mission and vision of the company get in line with their expectations. If investors feel that stated vision, mission, or values contradict the current strategy, they might cut investments or even end the relationships with this company. Another problem might be the fact, that with a “wrong” strategy the company will simply lose its direction. I think that companies with strategies that do not get in line with their vision, mission, or values are “doomed to fail” – at least unless they change anything.

         I think that one of the examples, when the strategy was not aligned with vision, mission, or values, is the situation that happened with one game dev company several years ago. Back then, it was a small and unknown studio of computer games that started its story with “tanks online” – a multiplayer browser game. It was a group of enthusiasts that wanted to create a game that would, of course, earn them money and be affordable for those who do not have computers with high processing capacity. At first, everything was fine – many players liked this game and recommended it to their friends; very soon the number of players was high. One of the first problems that caused a loss of lots of players was the fact, that one day this company decided to drastically raise the prices. So, if you paid 1$ for 10 in-game gold in past, now it was 1$ for 5 in-game gold. Many people did not like this and, without thinking too much, left the game. This change was probably a good idea for raising the money of the company, but they forgot that initially, they wanted to create an affordable game for a huge range of people. As a result of this strategy, they lost a lot of clients that did not like this attitude.

        I think that leaders can ensure that strategy matches the vision, mission, and values by analyzing if their strategy actually helps to achieve their mission and vision. It can be helpful to ask such questions as “does our strategy lead us to the results we want to achieve? How?” and if not, think what exactly should be changed – sometimes it might happen that the strategy is good and it is better to change mission, vision, and values because they are not relevant anymore – not vice versa. Everything depends on the situation.

References

Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2010). Management Principles, v. 1.1. Retrieved from https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/management-principles-v1.1/Wilymanager. (2011, May 30). Aligning Mission, Vision & Goals – A 3-Minute Crash Course. [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YKB9eEWBEE