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Note: Each month, The Rosy Blog highlights a different theme in our weekly posts. In April, our theme is the power of an organization’s mission, vision, and values. We’ll provide a series of exercises to help you get started on drafting your own—and of course if you need some help, you can always give us a ring.
It’s part two of our Mission, Vision, Values Workshop! It’s time to draft your Vision statement, the articulation of a big possible impact your company could have if you live out your Mission. Here at Rosy, we like a Vision statement that really goes for it—one that inspire you and that you aspire to live up to. So it might scare you just a little.
Ready? Let’s go!
Note: If you haven’t already completed our Mission Workshop, you’ll probably want to do that before—or as a part of the same work session—as this Vision drafting exercise.
Who should attend?
If you’re a small company, you may want to include every member of the organization in this process. But in many cases, you will want to choose a representative group of your company to lead the Mission/Vision/Values drafting process. If you have over 8 people in the room, you will want to split them into smaller working groups during the “Share” phase described below to encourage everyone’s participation.
What should you bring?
- Blank paper or our Impact Worksheet (download here).
- Post-its
- Pencils, pens, or markers
- A blank wall, whiteboard, or table
- Your team
How long is this going to take?
We recommend setting aside 45-60 minutes for this exercise.
The Workshop
Begin by defining what a Vision is.
Your Vision statement is a forward-looking statement about the impact your organization can have if you fulfill your Mission. It’s a good idea to have that Mission in front of the group during this exercise, so write it on the whiteboard if you have one.
Think about your impact.
Divide the whiteboard into four sections: ON OUR CUSTOMERS, IN OUR INDUSTRY, IN OUR COMMUNITY, and ON THE WORLD. Ask your team to answer the question, “what kind of impact do we want our Mission to have?” and “If we really excelled in fulfilling our Mission, what could possibly happen? Give your team 5-10 minutes to think and write on their worksheets.
Take it to the extreme.
Often, at this point, people will have written down ideas that are simply too small to inspire your organization over the long term. Challenge your team to take the ideas they’ve already written down and turn them up a notch by using Nike’s Vision statement as an example:
Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.
*(If you have a body, you are an athlete.)
See what they did there? Ask your team if they can expand their Vision statements to include more people, do more good, or connect more deeply with your Mission.
Share.
It’s time to share with the group! Make sure that everyone has a chance to speak before anyone judges the fit or quality of the statements as written.
Now you have a lot of first draft Vision statements. Getting to the one that is most inspiring and connected to your Mission? You’ve got it from here.
Ready to get started on your Values? We’ve got an exercise for that, too—coming up in just a few days.
Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash
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