Making Mission Real: From Handbook Slogans to Everyday Action

The preceding posts discussed Jack Welch’s most visible management principle: be number one or number two. This one turns to something more abstract and internal, but equally important: mission and values. First, an aside from Robin. How does a new employee experience an organization’s mission and values? Through the employee handbook? Through huge slogans on the wall? Mission and values may be far removed from the daily work of both new and long-serving employees. It is easy to imagine how difficult it is for them to feel the ideals their boss voices or the company displays on its walls. Welch believes a mission statement primarily answers one question: how will the company’s business win? That question has a clear meaning. It requires choices about people, resources, and capital, preventing blind action. It prompts a company to understand its strengths and weaknesses and establish its competitiveness in the market. Welch believes profitability and growth are always paramount. If the business cannot win financially, everything else is empty talk. But that does not mean a mission cannot include adventurousness and idealism. An effective mission balances possible and seemingly impossible goals. It provides clear direction and commercial rewards, while also offering hope and giving participants strength and motivation through the vision. At GE, for example, the mission from 1981 to 1985 was to become the world’s most competitive enterprise. Following that mission meant every business had to be number one or two in its field. Any that could not meet the requirement had to be reformed or sold. This was a clearly effective mission. Welch stresses that establishing the mission is management’s foremost task. It cannot be outsourced or delegated. Once established, the mission should not change frequently, but should be communicated frequently—emphasized in every conversation and meeting. If the mission is a ship’s direction, values are the rules aboard it. Unlike the mission, values are concrete and describable. They should leave little room for speculation, take shape in action, and continually be demonstrated through behavior. GE’s values, for example, included continually promoting and applying best practices and focusing on growth opportunities created by change. Those are relatively specific. Simply put, Welch believes values must be broken down into individual principles for action that employees can remember and demonstrate at work. Repeatedly explaining their importance is also a significant leadership responsibility. Mission and values both matter, but in practice they often drift apart. Suppose a competitor suddenly enters and lowers prices, forcing you to follow. That weakens your original mission of competing through high-quality customer service. Or an economic downturn forces cuts to advertising, departing from a mission of increasing brand awareness. A major responsibility of managers is to keep mission and values aligned so that the company avoids crisis. To sum up, the mission sets the broad direction, values provide concrete principles for action, and managers must keep the two from diverging, maintaining their balance.