Why Top Management Teams In Indian Firms Should be Concerned With Mission
n the world’s most successful companies, members of the top management team (TMT) feel a remarkable sense of ownership. The more involved TMT members are in setting the company’s direction, i.e. the company’s vision, mission and values, the more vested they are in its success. They are more engaged in formulating the company’s strategy and more willing to go the extra mile to see its flawless execution. Boards also play a crucial role in helping to define a company’s future direction. However, few Indian companies formally engage in a regular process to define and fine tune their “Vision, Mission, and Values”. Why?
Although the call centers and outsourcing firms were initially important catalysts to the fast-moving Indian economy, local Indian conglomerates are the ones creating true sustainable value. The opportunity to generate revenue today is so rich that companies favor opportunistic growth over strategic growth. The status of activities such as strategic planning and long term visioning are something Indian managers consider ‘nice to do’ but certainly ‘not necessary’. This is a pitfall most managers’ fall into when growth and opportunities are rampant. The result is short term gain often at the cost of important competitive missteps and oversights. Nevertheless, the most savvy of Indian CEOs recognize that ‘what got them here, won’t get them there’; they worry that as competition increases and growth slows, their most senior managers will not be ready for the competitive onslaught. They will lack the depth and breadth of skills necessary to be: (1) strong strategic planners, (2) thinkers, and (3) executors.
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The world’s most successful TMTs have a great deal of consistency between these three elements of strategy. When TMTs spend the time developing visions, missions and values together, this level of sophisticated coordination is often the result. Executive Development can play an important role in helping top managers develop this level of coordination. However, before exploring this role, let’s define why a company’s vision, mission and values are important?
The vision statement delineates what the company wants to be in a way that challenges the company to perform at its peak. A vision statement motivates people at all levels in the organization around the possible. It elevates how people see the organization. It creates that momentum of growing anticipation about the organization’s future. It fosters visceral reactions such as inspiration and excitement in those setting and espousing the vision. While vision statements attempt to capture what a company wants to be, mission statements capture why a company exists. A mission statement describes the company’s guiding philosophy in a way that is clear, compelling and deeply rooted in the company’s value proposition.
A mission statement guides the actions of the organization, spells out its overall goals, provides a sense of direction, and guides decision-making. It provides the framework or context within which the company's strategies are formulated and executed always pushing the bounds of success and merit. When a company’s TMT actively participates in setting its vision and mission, the inevitable result is the articulation of the company’s values. Values provide a framework for the collective leadership of an organization. They represent the basic beliefs that govern personal work behaviors, decision making, contribution, and interpersonal interaction. Values are detailed and specific and represent the building blocks of a company’s success. They speak directly to how leaders should prioritize and make decisions about revenue and cost drivers. They represent action oriented convictions on how the company’s business is to be conducted serving as a yardstick for gauging the appropriateness of particular actions, decisions and policies. Values guide every decision that is made when the organization has cooperatively created the values and the value statements.
There are two sides to the debate about the process TMTs should follow to set a company’s vision, mission and values. One side argues that this process is an internal activity – best left to the senior managers and the CEO. The other side argues that outside facilitators are crucial to the process as they can bring a level of rigor and candor that often goes missing in an insular process. The simple truth is there are many advantages and disadvantages to both options and depending on your perspective sometimes both options have the same advantages and disadvantages. For example, some would argue that not involving an outside facilitator keeps the process ‘in the family’ and managers can be more candid in their responses. Others would suggest that an outside facilitator would mitigate political fears and enable managers to be more open and honest about different processes that affect the organization’s future.
I suggest the very reason Indian firms need to become more regular in the setting of their missions; visions and values are to help them increase their competitiveness in the market place. In today’s Indian business environment, competitiveness is at odds with concepts such insularity or ‘keeping it in the family’.
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