Sis and I were shootin’ the breeze the other evening. She’s the Operations lead for a small company. They’re growing fast. They’ve got a pretty impressive online model for training aspiring animators. If you think: “Toy Story,” “Nemo,” “Monsters, Inc.,” you’d be in the ballpark about what animators do.
Anyway, so our chat turns to all the stuff that’s going on in each of our businesses. Specifically, when you’re growing a business with so many seemingly promising opportunities, how do you know which ones to go after? I mean, with limited time and resources, right? Which do you give serious consideration of your time to invest your precious few bucks?
It was a great chat. I was able to share some things about my current gig, as well as others I’ve worked in the past during my “corporate tours.” But I also remember, thinking, gosh, this is also kinda like, y’know, when I was running my real estate business. Geez, a week wouldn’t go by when I wasn’t bombarded with some new service, or other: web sites, cold calling services, lead generation sites, FSBO scripts, marketing lists, SEO services, power books and yes, even services from my company touting online training and designation courses.
My take on it was that this was the kind of stuff that gives importance to having an articulated vision. That is, what statement could you write that describes what your business will look like in, say, 3-7 years?
But, not only that. It’s important, too, to take time to draft a similarly written statement about what is it that your business does today. What are you about?
We talked about the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement. And, how these two play together to define a direction for growth. Armed with that picture of “what my business does today” and another of “my business tomorrow,” day-to-day decisions, while still difficult, will at least have some additional context. One investment may or may not make sense depending on whether or not it fits with the picture of “my business in the future." My point to her being, if we only have a vague picture of what we want to be when we “grow up,” we risk wasting precious time and resources on decisions made today.
Then I was just curious: I know the big corporate guys often puff-on about their “vision” and what their “mission” is. Leave alone for a moment the idea of “core values” and whether or not they actually include these things in their strategic decisions. Some do it better than others.
But outside of the corporate world, I was wondering what the take is from some of us in smaller businesses. Is the mission-, vision-thing a tool for decision making in smaller businesses? Or is it just a tired ‘ol mantra that corporations use to puff up their annual reports and shareholder brochures?
Just curious.
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