Defining Success
Crafting Your Company’s Mission & Values
Strategy is an exercise of consciously making decisions that are most compelling from the universe of choices that are possible. This requires progressive eliminating potential options as you go.
Previously we explored the logistics of creating a strategic plan and addressed some of the challenges you may face in the process. Like setting aside dedicated time and resources, breaking the planning process into manageable steps, building a team to help develop your vision and goals, delegating tasks to those who can be trusted to execute and building flexibility into the plan.
This week, we’ll discuss creating your company’s Mission and Values. While this may seem unrelated at first, values and principles align your team around what you are creating and why.
Yes, you want to make money, but how you do so will help attract and retain the people who will get you and your company there.
Winning Aspiration
Roger Martin, former Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, calls a Mission/Vision a Winning Aspiration. Regardless of what you name it, its function is to ensure you’re on the right path before proceeding. Your Mission, Vision, or Winning Aspiration should answer:
What is the overarching motivation for the organization?
Why does it exist?
Would the community/market be impacted if you didn’t exist?
Do staff feel like they are contributing to something greater than themselves?
If your initial reaction is skepticism, take a moment to reflect. Your mindset and worldview impact your company’s success. Do you see how your mindset and how you view the world can impact your company? Focusing on becoming more open, personally, may seem unrelated to running a successful construction company, but it directly impacts your businesses outcomes.
This is one of those fork-in-the-road moments where what you choose to do will have a greater impact on how your business rolls out then you may realize.
Rolling your eyes is a defense mechanism and closes options down. You can move onto something else, which eliminates all of the opportunities that come after you get over yourself and do the work you’re avoiding.
Rolling up your sleeves is a proactive response that can begin the evolution of your business that you’ve been desperately searching for.
So before you dismiss this, I encourage you to keep reading with an open mind.
Building Your Strategy Team
If you’re starting to assess your team for strategic planning, remember that success depends on their enthusiasm, adaptability, and ability to provide candid feedback. Your team’s engagement will be a key gauge of your success.
Additionally, designate individuals to monitor progress — akin to a project manager and administrator. These roles should not be filled by you but by people who can hold the team accountable when motivation fades.
If no one in your company can fulfill this role, consider bringing in external consultants.
Strategy Choice Cascade
I’m a big fan of what Roger Martin writes about Strategy.
Keep in mind he usually works with very large organizations and corporations, but I think there’s a great deal of value in how he approaches Strategy and Business. There are a decent number of parallels between what he’s been talking about for the last 20 years and where we are going with developing your business strategy.
Martin emphasizes that strategy is not just a plan, but a set of critical choices that position an organization to win, called the Strategy Choice Cascade. It’s below
He ordered the Cascade based on the level of abstraction running from the upper left to the lower right.
The thinking and content of Winning Aspiration (WA) is the most abstract:
What is the overarching motivation for the organization? → your mission.
It becomes more tactical as you move to the right.
According to Martin in a Medium Article “Decoding the Strategy Choice Cascade”. “The order in which he arranged the Cascade is logically tractable.
If you don’t have a draft of your Winning Aspiration (WA), it is hard to even begin to think about Where to Play (WTP) or How to Win (HTW).
The Where to Play/How to Win choice would be completely unbounded, and likewise, without a draft Where to Play/How to Win, you don’t have any frame to guide your Must Have Capabilities choice.
And, since the job of the Enabling Management Systems (EMS) is to build and maintain the Must Have Capabilities (MHC), you can’t think usefully about management systems until you have a draft list of capabilities required to do the work of winning.
Hence the order runs from higher abstraction to lower abstraction in a way that enables sensible logical nesting.”
The simplicity of this method appeals to me. But it’s also incredibly hard to nail down with clients who feel like Strategy needs to be complicated and hard (which this is because it’s simple and you can’t hide in busywork).
We’re going to focus on the first box, Winning Aspiration (WA), aka Mission/Vision/etc/etc/etc.
Principles & Strategy Connection
Your personal principles manifest in your company’s leadership style, culture, and decision-making:
Decision-Making: Leaders and business owners make countless decisions daily. Their personal principles guide these decisions.
Leadership Style: Personal principles shape a leader’s leadership style. For example, a leader with a strong belief in integrity will likely lead with transparency and honesty. But someone who values their ego over integrity will finger point and blame others.
Employee Motivation: Leaders who demonstrate their personal principles through their actions can inspire and motivate their employees or not.
Company Culture: A leader who values collaboration and teamwork will likely create a workplace where employees feel empowered to share their ideas and work together effectively.
Ethical Decision-Making: Leaders who value accountability are more likely to own mistakes. They will also make ethical decisions, even when faced with pressure or temptation. They understand that their actions reflect not only on themselves but also on their company’s reputation.
Conflict Resolution: A leader with values or principles around creating community will approach disagreements with a commitment to finding a solution that respects all parties involved.
Stress Management: Leaders and business owners often face high levels of stress. Personal principles can help them manage stress effectively by providing a sense of purpose and direction.
Your values and principles guide what you do when no one is watching. And they aren’t always positive. In this industry, there’s a lot of temptation. Negative principles — such as prioritizing short-term profits over sustainability or neglecting safety protocols — can severely damage a company. Employees recognize when leadership prioritizes personal gain over company well-being.
This can look like prioritizing short term profits over sustainability (in decision making), being lazy about creating and sustaining safety protocols for your workers, paying workers much less than you should, manipulating financial reports, or ignoring clear signs that your company is in trouble by burying your head in the sand.
Obviously there are a lot of gray areas, you know when things aren’t right.
So if you get a Prevailing Wage project (assuming you’re a non union shop) and you don’t pay your guys the wage plus the fringe, you may not get caught, but it does 100% show your team where your Principles lie: I will profit at the expense of everyone else.
Negative Principles kill more companies than lack of capital does.
Crafting Your Winning Aspiration
When you’re working on your Winning Aspiration (WA), aka Mission/Vision/etc/etc/etc, think about the values and principles you want to guide the development of your Winning Aspiration.
Mark Manson wrote a great article about this, which I would strongly recommend you read. In it he writes:
“Asking yourself why you want what you want will help you uncover the values that underlie the life you’ve imagined for yourself.
Now is the time to judge and ask:
Are the values you just defined good or bad values?
Are they evidence-based or emotion-based?
Constructive or destructive?
Controllable or uncontrollable?
Are you happy to let those values guide your entire life?
From now to eternity?
If yes, then good for you, you may proceed as you always have. If not, then it’s time to reinvent yourself and find better values.”
I would also like to recommend reading/listening to or watching Ray Dalio’s Principles.
You have to be comfortable enough with your Principles & Values that you repeat AND demonstrate them for your team regularly.
Once you have a set of Principles that you can be proud of and feel comfortable standing behind, you’re ready to start working on your Winning Aspiration.
Answer the following questions, first by yourself, and then with your Strategy Team to determine if your guiding principle aligns with your business:
What does a successful company look like to you?
What do you want from the company?
Why do you want that?
So now we’re ready to begin and we’re going to spend very little time on the Winning Aspiration. We’ll keep circling back to it, don’t worry. This is the part of Strategy development that makes Contractors a little crazy. We like things that are concrete and in a plan, which we will get to, just not immediately.
Before we do, I’d like to pull the sequence of events from one of Martin’s posts that lays it all out. Emphasis, parentheses and formatting are mine:
“Take each of the five boxes very seriously. Don’t spend disproportionate time on (the) first three boxes. That is a classic strategy mistake. You need to perform the reality check for yours to be a lasting and effective strategy.
Toggle back and forth among the five boxes.
The heart is the WTP (Where to Play) or HTW (How to Win) combination, so don’t give it short shrift.
Don’t spend disproportionate time and energy up front on WA (Winning Aspiration). See it as simply guiding you in a general vector (like principles).
As you explore WTP (Where to Play) or HTW (How to Win) possibilities, toggle back to refine your WA (Winning Aspiration) so that there is fit among the first three elements.
Then toggle down to the reality check to see whether your WTP (Where to Play) or HTW (How to Win) can be put into action, whether it is strong and will last.
Check whether your MHC (Must Have Capabilities) and EMS (Enabling Management Systems) are truly distinctive from those of competitors in your WTP (Where to Play).
If not, toggle back up to the heart of strategy to explore possibilities that might be stronger.
And then up to the WA and back down to the reality check until all five elements fit together and reinforce one another.
That is how to use the Strategy Choice Cascade and why it has the five boxes it has, in the specific order, with the particular shape.”
Here are a few guidelines for starting to craft your Winning Aspiration/Mission/Vision/etc/etc:
Start with people, not money: Companies like Nike and McDonald’s center their mission around customers.
Make it inspiring and meaningful: Your mission should resonate with employees and clients.
It’s not about you, it’s about your clients: An HVAC contractor doesn’t just install systems; they assist clients develop/design and install healthier, more sustainable options when building affordable housing. The difference between the two statements is nuanced, but crucial.
Study competitors: Look at your biggest and best competitors in the industry and consider asking the following questions: What are they doing strategically and operationally that is better than us? Where and how do they outperform us? What could we learn from them and do differently?
Commit to trade-offs: Avoid trying to be all things to all clients. Clarity about what not to do is as crucial as defining what to do.
Communicate industry impact: Define why your company’s role in the industry matters.
The most crucial dimension of a company’s aspiration — winning. Winning is an outcome.
OUTCOMES flow from specific BEHAVIORS that are being driven by specific BELIEFS & PRINCIPLES.
Principles →Behaviors → Outcomes
The essence of your great strategy is making specific choices, which begins with an aspiration to win and define what winning looks like. These outcomes will only happen if it’s supported by behaviors and underpinned with principles.
Unless winning is the ultimate aspiration, you will be stuck treading water. If you don’t believe you can win, identify the necessary skills and start developing them.
Looking Ahead
Hopefully now you understand how your personal development, as the leader, indicates whether you and your team will be able to take this step. If you need to circle back and read how your personal development impacts your business, please do.
Next week we’ll touch on Where to Play and the many ways to define it. Spoiler, it’s not just the geography. Once we have your Where to Play, we’ll move to the many How to Win possibilities and then circle back around to Winning Aspiration, as Martin suggests.