Today we’re continuing our efforts to increase your control over your COVID recovery strategy. If you have yet to look through the questions to consider from Part 1 and Part 2, I suggest you take a few minutes to do so.
In this post, we will look at high-level goal considerations, with a special focus on re-setting your vision. Again, it’s best to think of your answers like a mind map with various branches that you will later re-evaluate for implementation. So, time to dream a bit…
High-Level Recovery Considerations
- Purpose/Mission
- Important reminder…a Mission Statement should always answer, as concisely as possible, two questions: who are we and what do we do?
- Re-visit your Mission Statement. Have the answers to these two key questions changed at all because of COVID?
- If no, use the Mission review to re-focus your efforts, but no further changes are necessary
- If yes, adapt your Mission to the new reality. This can be a simple re-write, or a more involved effort that brings stakeholders together to identify key items currently in and missing from the Mission.
- Be sure to incorporate any key lessons learned from your previous external and internal
- Principles/Values
- Review your Values and Values Statements. Have any of these changed due to COVID?
- More likely, are there any you need to add and codify from the last year? In particular, consider any additions related to staff flexibility and remote work.
- Remember two key elements of effective Values Statements:
- First, Stated Values should be as consistent as possible with Real Values (what you actually practice),
- Second, Values should provide concrete examples to guide team members in decision making and through ethical dilemmas.
- Be sure to incorporate any changes you made to your Mission or learned from your previous analyses.
- Vision
- A Vision Statement should always start with an answer to, “what would wild success look like in x number of years?” This is a good place to start on your Vision review, before you ever look at any existing Vision Statement. Given all we have experienced in the last year, what would wild success three, five, ten years down the road look like? Note that description as specifically as possible.
- Review any current Vision Statements. What changes do you need to incorporate due to COVID? From your re-envisioned wild success?
- Be sure to incorporate any changes made to your Mission and Values.
- Goals/Objectives
- It’s likely that most Vision Statements and Goals need revising, if not complete overhauls, after 2020.
- Review your 18–24-month objectives. Which ones are no longer realistic given how the world has changed? (Look to your analyses for guidance.) Which are still relevant but need adapting? Which are still in great shape as they stand?
- What new ideas or lessons have you uncovered from your external and internal analyses? How do these impact your short-term goals? Do you need to add new goals to address these?
- If you made any changes to Mission, Values, and Vision, do those changes create any new goals or suggest any revisions to existing goals?
- Overall, what outcomes must be complete in the next few years to move your Vision closer to reality? What new goals, or revisions to existing goals, do those answers inspire?
Most people are uncomfortable with this high-level vision “stuff”. It’s not very action-oriented, and without any tangible forward motion it often appears to be a waste of time. Remember, though, the human brain responds powerfully to a crystalized vision of a desired outcome. Nothing motivates action better than a clear vision of wild success. These seemingly “navel-gazing” exercises will be time well spent, I assure you.
Next time, we’ll take this down to the operational level and look at strategy and execution considerations. Finally, in the last post, we’ll consider how to incorporate all of this into a plan to prepare well for the next crisis…whatever that may be.
Need help reviewing and developing your Mission, Vision, and Goals? Contact us today to discuss your opportunities.
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