I have been involved in countless efforts throughout my career when various organizations needed to change their direction fundamentally. Such changes are rarely quick, easy, or successful the first time. The reason for this is because understanding the details of such change is itself an incremental discovery process, because the underlying organizations have one or more cultures that may resist these changes to varying degrees, because the interorganizational dynamics are often not sufficiently understood, and because communicating the nature of and approach for such changes to those who need to implement the changes is difficult.

When I have seen such changes implemented successfully, it has usually been because the change management was performed in a disciplined manner, and involved a tiered system of vision, strategy, and tactics which was defined, maintained, and evolved over time, and used as the basis for accountability and planning. Although this idea is frequently (and often comically) followed across all businesses, in my experience, it is rarely done well. I believe one reason for this is that the underlying concepts and associated quality criteria are themselves poorly understood and executed. This note attempts to establish a unified perspective on these elements, to promote understanding, and thus improve the ability to execute such an approach.

An organization's mission should communicate the fundamental purpose for that entity's existence, and the desired level of performance which the organization must achieve to be successful in the present and the future. As such, it should address:

1. The scope of the business
2. The unique competencies which differenciates it from others
3. The values which it treasures above all others

An extensive summary of corporate mission statements can be found here. Some of my favorites are:

• Amazon.com: Be earth's most customer centric company; build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
• Dell: Listen to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they trust and value.
• eBay: Pioneer communities built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity.
• Facebook: Help people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers, through technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, and the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections.

Visions are distinct from missions, though the two concepts often are unfortunately often used interchangeably. Visions should be statements of what the organization and its customers aspire to be in the future. This progression should be a credible stretch from the current group's mission; otherwise, the business purpose of the organization would not be sustainable as the vision was pursued. To be effective over time, a vision should meet all of the following criteria:

1. It should communicate a vivid, verifiable future state, in engaging language, that would be the best possible outcome for the organization
2. It should express tangible and realistic aspirations that are appealing to all stakeholders, and inspirational to those who will pursue it
3. It should enable differentiation of possible strategies available to the organization over time
4. It should be concise, attention-grabbing, and inspirational

I believe that while a vision should result from input from many sources, it must ultimately emerge from the organization's leader and the direction they chose to take the organization on over time. In contract, strategies can be built from many different sources and perspectives. According to Coyne and Subramaniam, in The McKinsey Quarterly, 1996, Number 4, a strategy is the handful of decisions that:

• drive or shape subsequent actions,
• are not easily changed once made, and
• have the greatest impact on long-term success

• selecting your strategic posture with respect to your customers regarding your product and service offerings
• identifying the source(s) of value which you will pursue for those customers
• developing approaches to create or align projects with these sources of value
• constructing tailored delivery systems to realize benefits from these projects as early as possible

Strategies can be effectively communicated using methodologies such as strategic diamonds. Regardless of the means of communication, however, key success elements for such strategies include:

1. Achieving a consistent understanding of these strategies across multiple stakeholders
2. Facilitating trade-offs across alternatives which emerge over time
3. Providing utility for the business and the evolving environment under multiple possible future scenarios
4. Integrating and exploit conceptual knowledge available within the organization

Tactics are a collection of actions which involve the ordered arrangement of resources in relation to each other and the environment in order to maximize their potential value over time. Individual tactics are typically translated into objectives, which establish specific outcomes that are to be intentionally pursued at a particular point in time. Once these are accomplished, those resources should then be available for application to other situations. This is why such outcomes should be described using SMART criteria - so their duration and level can be properly estimated and planned.

Too often, I've seen the expressions of vision and strategy become entrapped by concensus, and subject to a set of classic pitfalls. When this occurs, visions do not enable effective strategic planning to be performed. The development of these visions are crafted in painful sessions, then often are set aside, never to be examined again. While the use of such strategic planning frameworks can be quite effective, it will only be so if adequate attention is put into developing these concepts, and if the resulting artifacts are routinely put into practice in the many places they can be applied.

Consider the above criteria relative to the following examples:

• Land a man on the moon and safely return him to earth by the end of this decade
• To be the world's best in chemicals and electronic imaging (Kodak)
• Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful (Google)
• To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind (Apple)
• A personal computer in every home running Microsoft software.

Each of these elements - missions, visions, and strategies - involves development and effective communications of abstract ideas, typically expressed in relatively short, prose statements. An effective approach for developing such statements consists of the following steps:

1. Select a small team to brainstorm an initial draft

2. Concur on brainstorming ground rules

3. Use multiple sessions to brainstorm potential waypoints, such as Where We Should Go, What We Must Accomplish, and How to Measure Success

4. Identify key phrases from these exercises

5. Solicit volunteers to independently craft several alternative statements using these key phrases

6. Select the best from these alternatives as a draft as a team (fewer = better)

7. Identify useful formulations from unselected alternatives and incorporate

8. Refine the language used in the draft

9. Digest this draft (separately) for a day or two

10. Come together to incorporate last minute changes

11. Submit to an appropriate authority for final approval

12. Agree on a periodic update plan

Once this occurs, flow-down will obviously be necessary to assure accountability, linkage, and alignment across the organization.