Why does business need a mission?

Most marketing research shows that companies, which have a clearly formulated and written mission are more successful than the companies that are developing “in the manual mode of operation” and live, so to say, from day to day.

Now, everyone can outline and write the strategic goals: Mission, Vision, Values of the company and to post them on the corporate website. However, not everyone achieves high results. Why is that? The answer is very simple. The key is in your attitude towards the outlined long-term goals and your ability to implement them. Most often, companies encounter a range of problems when developing the strategic goal and implementing it, and do not receive the desired effect.

 One of the reasons that a company can never reach its strategic goal, is a formal attitude to the chosen mission and vision. The mission has to explain in a clear and simple way, who you are and what you do; and your vision is a guide when making a decision (in order not to deviate from the goal). This is not a dream or “the desire of future” detached from reality, but long-term goals the company plans to achieve within a set period of time. By the way, further tactical moves and short-term goals – for a year, a month or even a week, are planned on the basis of vision. For instance, AgroGeneration has clearly outlined the direction of its development and is guided by it: “We are creating additional value through vertical and horizontal integration, land expansion, optimization of production process, supply, storage and sales; and we lead the development, doing our best to restore fertility of the land and to improve the well-being in the regions in which we are operating!”

I would note, the mission and the vision of the company are not «ordered from above». They should come up during the team work. All key employees of the company participated in the development of our “guide”. Accordingly, the company strategy has been developed by all directors and heads of departments; this didn’t happen in one day, one meeting. What is interesting at this point: employees’ vision of the “company future” didn’t differ significantly. Everybody understands that the future belongs to progress, innovation, and caring attitude to the land and people. This understanding has defined the main motto of AgroGeneration: “We grow future with care for land and people!”. And though approaches on how to implement these aims differed a bit, the main thing was that all ideas were approximately in one direction.

 Next stage: it was necessary to bring together the proposed future, remove the unnecessary that distracts from the essential and place it in an open access. So it’s a complex work.

 And what's next? You have published it and forgot? This is often the case. A conditional company has developed a genius mission has posted it on the website – and that’s it… There is a mission. People can visit the website and read. But it does not work like this. If you want every employee to understand in what direction the company moves, what is expected personally from him, and what initiatives should be brought forward – then communicate your mission to each specialist, including accountant, tractor driver, agronomist... To everyone! By the way, a huge amount of people work for Agrogeneration, and everyone understands aspirations and benchmarks of the company.

 Naturally, such work requires time and efforts, however, they will be repaid a hundredfold, as everyone wants to feel that his personal contribution is important, that every day we come to office for a reason and work to achieve an important aim. Horst Schultse, Ritz-Carlton hotel network president once said: “It is immoral to ask people to work without aim. And it’s our duty to help them to find it.” It is the mission that makes the company work meaningful and the staff motivated. And the vision helps everybody to strive for the goal.

Now, our guides are written until at least 2020. We pay more attention to the implementation of new technologies, optimization of processes and increase of effectiveness. People are the most important asset. Thus, the priorities are: work with staff and development of communications with lease holders.

Strategy implies the company understands what it wishes to be in a certain period of time, as well as how it is perceived on the market. Therefore, taking into account that we don’t live in a vacuum, and our goals are influenced by external factors, the strategy has to be revised. But it does not imply a drastic change in the course, absolutely not. You should check whether the chosen direction is right, whether your vision still complies with the strategic goals.