Mission... Vision... Values... With Great words comes great responsibility
Mission… Vision… Values… With Great words comes great responsibility!
Mission… Vision… Values… These are big topics big words and yet they are often forgotten when it’s time to make important decisions.
Organizations of all sizes struggle with these concepts, and my point of view on this is that it’s hard to capture the essence of what these words are in the context of a modern organization. This is made even more challenging when you consider that most organizations even bootstrapping Startup’s can be made of up people from different cultures across multiple countries.
Trying to get these right can lead to overly generic and hard to apply words that loose meaning to most people.
Do the right thing or the old thing…
A common value I haver seen in more than one organization is “Do the right thing” … This one might seem obvious, but in the context of an organization with over 10 000 employees doing the right thing can quickly become subjective. Further the right thing for one team is often the wrong thing for another. When that happens one team must be righter than the other … shouldn’t it?
What happens when someone uses a value to shut down a line of inquiry? When a senior manager says… “that isn’t the right thing” in a group setting, it can stifle exploring an idea from a non-obvious perspective, often what’s happening is the “old thing” is being substituted for the “right thing”.
I think Gitlab has done it better than most!
One company that I admire, and I think has spent a lot of time working on what these words mean in a way that works across teams, geographies and cultures is Gitlab. If you’re starting from scratch the Gitlab handbook is pure gold. https://handbook.gitlab.com.
They have spent a lot of time making sure that these concepts aren’t just vague overly aspirational notions, they have clearly defined what these mean for the organization and those working in it. They give examples, and they have fleshed out nuanced details that reflect what is important for Gitlab’s culture and values. The best part is the handbook is it’s open source! https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/handbook-usage/#external-use-of-the-handbook
Ok So what does this have to do with being a CIO?!?
So in wrapping up this post, you might be wondering what any of this has to do with being a CIO, Well to answer that, it’s all about making information visible and enabling the mission, vision and values to be communicated to all members of an organization in a way that empowers the people to live and be motivated by them. When a technology choice is made it can have an impact on all of these concepts. It can emphasize and amplify them, or it can work to trivialize or minimize their relevance.
Understanding that there is a connection between the technology you choose and living your mission vision and values is critical to being making decision that will lead to future success and good organizational execution.
