Vision Mission Values
Behind The Meaning
Vision, Mission, and Values are three core principles that are unfortunately thrown around in business a lot.
It’s the first thing you get done in a business plan, but it’s also usually the three that get forgotten as things get busy.
If we asked your employees or friends, what is your business vision, mission, values - is this something they can repeat back with confidence? Do your team embody your vision and values or more importantly - do you reflect this back to your team? In this short article we cover what we feel this means to help you potentially realign and refine.
What Do Vision, Mission, And Values Mean For Us?
Vision, Mission, and Values are core principles in your business because it is the DNA and blood that flow throughout your whole business. In this article, we cover key points to help you refine what that looks like for you
Crafting The Vision
At VMV, our succinct vision statement encapsulates the essence of our work: "Cultivating Leaders That Impact Future." This core vision serves as the unifying identity for our team, clients, and partners. As empowered leaders, we transcend the ordinary and aspire to contribute meaningfully to the world, society, and our spheres of influence. Our collective ambition extends beyond the day-to-day, as we seek to leave behind a lasting legacy, unafraid to challenge conventional norms.
Question: Does my vision align with myself, team, clients and where I want to go?
The vision includes the wider picture and impact you want to create. This is where you have conversations with people that draws them in and inspires them to hear more.
Mission
The mission can be longer than a sentence. This embodies the “how” and “who” related to how you will go about achieving your vision. VMV’s mission is “Empowering a global alliance of visionary business leaders and entrepreneurs, uniting to shape a transformative legacy for the world and future generations through business growth and education.”
The mission covers how you go about achieving your vision, and the outcome you want to achieve for who. It should be something where your core activities throughout your day should reflect back to advancing your vision.
Question: Am I operating within my mission as I look at what I do for my clients, team and myself? How does this make me feel, and is this aligned and realising my vision at the end of each day?
The mission is an excellent opportunity to then branch into sharing about what your services, your UVP (Unique Value Proposition) and alignment with values.
Values
When I was 22 years old, one of the values I carried was “20 seconds of foolish courage” to take risks and create relationships that otherwise not be open. At a networking event, I stepped into a group of distinguished gentlemen that were conversing between themselves. I introduced myself to their poker faces and introduced myself as a future CEO.
My heart beat like it was about to fly out and my face twitched as sweat began to bead and I didn’t know whether to smile awkwardly or drain of all colour. Thankfully, their faces broke into warm smiles and they introduced themselves as ‘actual’ CEOs of different firms.
I ended up building relationships with them and ended up working with them on prestigious projects and one of the executives had shared a word for me after a solid year and a half: “Tim, you went about business the right way. The values you exemplify and the care and ownership you put into everything is stellar. Business is all about relationships and you got that bit right.” That story actually didn’t end well, he offered me a spot under his wing, and I stayed loyal to my director then which at the end of the day did not value me as much as the executive did. That’s another lesson on it’s own - but I had realised the simplicity of work.
People work with people they share values with, align with and like. A trust is formed, memories created and the journey becomes much easier with the right people in your corner.
When outlining your values, I want you to go deep into why it is important and feel it. An example of a typical value which is important, but is thrown there is “Integrity”. What does integrity mean for you, and do you cultivate a space that attracts people of integrity there? When you look at your current team, or yourself, is this a value you live out?
"Values are felt, not spoken about" - Tim Lin - Founder of vmv advisory
When outlining values, I feel it covers the three elements:
Personal Values - Character
Team Values - Influence
Client Values - Trust
The I Cubed Method
To make it easy, I came up with a method to understand the core meaning of Vision, Mission and Values:
VISION - Inspires
MISSION - Informs
VALUES - Ignites
If you want a list of questions that help prompt and provide some clarity in this area, contact our team mentioning “VMV alignment” as the subject and we could arrange a call to help you refine your vision. If you wish to invest and go further into how to implement this into your business, that will be covered under our services.
