1.

The Mission Statement Provides a Beginning

Your mission statement answers the question, “Why do we exist?” It gives the organization
purpose and meaning. It speaks to why employees want to work for your company. It begins to
answer the question, “what is strategic management and planning?”. If you’re a for-profit
organization, the fundamental mission of the business is to create shareholder value. But that
won’t attract anyone to come work for you, and it does not give rise to a bigger corporate
purpose. It doesn’t inspire any employees nor align with their individual values.
Every organization needs to define its fundamental purpose, philosophy, and values as part of the
corporate strategy process. The mission statement answers the basic questions of why your
company exists and describes the needs your company was created to fulfill. It is NOT about
your products and services or customers. It is about why you provide them.
For instance, the mission of AchieveIt is “equipping business leaders to achieve their most
important initiatives.” It is about accelerating the results curve. We come to work every day
driven by the idea of transforming businesses. We strive for more results and better results faster,
whether for our own company or for the customers we serve.
How we do this is through our software and services, which we continually enhance to drive
better results. How we accomplish our mission today may be different from how we accomplish
it tomorrow. The mission statement points us in the right direction. Our strategic and operational
plans become the road map. Our goals and objectives help us measure success along the way.
Without the guidance of our mission statement, programmatic priorities would be difficult to
establish and the corporate strategy process would become muddled.
A mission statement, therefore, provides the basis for judging the success of an organization and
its goals. It helps the organization verify if it is on the right track and making the right decisions.
It provides direction when the organization is tempted by distractions and forced to adapt to new
demands. Attention to the company mission helps the organization adhere to its primary purpose
and serves as a touchstone for decision-making during times of conflict. With a strong mission
statement in place, it is very easy to identify your goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics.
A mission statement can also be used as a tool for resource allocation for staff, donors,
volunteers, and community involvement.
Examples of Powerful Mission Statements
Consider these powerful company mission statements:

 Harley-Davidson: We fulfill dreams through the experiences of motorcycling.

 Southwest Airlines: We are dedicated to the highest level of customer service
delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit.
 MD Anderson Cancer Center: To make cancer history.
  Google: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible
and useful.
Notice that none of these organizations’ mission statements include anything about what they do
as businesses. Instead, they focus on the core of their existence. It is this core that attracts and
retains employees, provides market differentiation, and attracts customers. For instance, Harley-
Davidson has an insanely loyal customer base that now includes more than 250 clubs that
provide thousands of volunteer hours through the Harley-Davidson Foundation. These are people
attracted to Harley-Davidson because they share a common belief that absolute freedom is found
on a motorcycle on the open road.
2. Differences Between Blue Ocean And Red Ocean Strategies
To recognize when to use which strategy, let’s understand the differences between both of them.
 Market
The Red Ocean Strategy focuses on existing markets, whereas the whole concept of the Blue
Ocean Strategy is to break the status quo and come up with something unique and new. For
example, cold drinks belong to the Red Ocean as there are so many companies selling them.
However, a new generation of 3D printers or self-driving electronic cars would belong to the
Blue Ocean.
 Competitors
As explained above, the Red Ocean Strategy involves fierce competition, whereas the whole idea
of competition is irrelevant in the Blue Ocean Strategy. This is because it involves exploring new
markets that neither other companies nor customers know anything about.
 Differentiating factors
Due to the commoditization of many products in the Red Ocean, the ultimate differentiating
factor often tends to be price. If you recall the example of sugar sellers that’s mentioned above,
you’ll be able to understand this point better. Now, in the Blue Ocean, there can be a lot of
differentiating factors and price can be one of them, but not necessarily the only one. For
instance, if a new type of smartphone appears in the market, one that is better than all Apple and
Android smartphones, the differentiating factors could include distinctiveness, ease of use, better
performance, etc. At this stage, companies producing the new type of smartphone won’t be under
pressure to decrease their price because of the absence of competitors in the market.
 Demand
The Red Ocean Companies compete with each other in order to fulfill the current demand in the
market, but Blue Ocean Companies, with their innovation and foresightedness, create a new type
of demand and solve the problems that customers didn’t know they had before.
  Therefore When you start understanding the difference between red ocean and
blue ocean, a natural question arises: why would you ever dive into the red ocean when
blue is so much more promising? Personally, it made no sense to me that people bring
new products to an already saturated market. Why do they want to fight with all the
competitors that are already successful?
Well, what we often don’t get is that blue ocean does not guarantee you success. Having no
competitors doesn’t mean you have to try less: it’s the other way around. If you are lucky and
you have an idea for a product in a blue ocean, there is still so much to do: develop a product
from scratch, create a new market, and try to do all of it before someone else outpaced you!
Having no competitors means that there are no one else’s mistakes to learn from. You have no
reference regarding design, pricing, marketing… It’s a blank page that is so easy to screw up.
To succeed in a blue ocean, products have to analyze the market, do the research, go from
problem to solution, and test it well in advance – because when you bring something completely
new, be prepared to have a long series of iterations.
Now that you think of it, jumping in a red ocean, where many products have already proven to be
successful, is not that much work. You can rely on existing cases, study them, and find what
exactly you can do better to differentiate and win over the competition. Or, if you don’t have any
strong differentiation, you can always get your chunk of the market by setting prices lower.
3. Strategic management needs to be visible
That there is a process for creating and implementing strategy should never be hidden — it sends
a signal to staff and customers that the organization and its leaders are looking ahead.

The strategies themselves, the results of the process if you like, may or may not be confidential
depending on their nature and context. Some strategies will require communication to staff,
customers, suppliers, regulators, etc., such as increased investment and focus on customer
service. Some, to be effective, can only be revealed at an appropriate moment, when all
necessary preparations have been made — for example, a major downsizing.

It would be rare for a strategy to remain successfully hidden for a long time. Strategies influence
decisions and actions, and people soon come to realize something has changed.

When you’re formulating a strategy for your business, it is vital that you implement an open,
transparent system throughout the entire process.
Strategic management shouldn’t be left solely in the domain of those highest up in the hierarchy.
To ensure that strategy execution goes according to plan, everyone in the organization must have
a clear picture of how it is progressing at all times.
Keep everyone on the same page
Upper-level management may have the biggest say in developing the core of a business strategy,
but the actual job of implementing it relies on the entire workforce.
Keeping the strategic planning process transparent ensures every individual is connected the
whole time, and knows exactly what is required of them at each stage.
Makes sure your strategy is in sync
By giving everyone in the organization an insight into the strategy and their role in relation to it,
you can iron out discrepancies and inconsistencies to ensure it is carried out without a hitch.
When the time comes to execute your strategy, a transparent approach will ensure that all the
components are aligned and it can come to life quickly and efficiently.
Investing in business strategy software can help foster communication throughout your
organization so the strategy can be implemented seamlessly.
Improves staff morale
Nothing makes an employee feel more appreciated than providing them direct access to the
business’s strategy and outlining their place in its overall scheme.
You can place accountability on your staff and prove you trust them by letting them know how
the strategy is progressing, and what steps they can take to ensure its success.

4. To get an idea of the approach best for your organization, it’s helpful to think of the
current stage of your organization. 

If you’re growing and consider your company more of a start-up, it might be best to start with a
bottom-up approach as you continue to learn more about the space and the industry from your
employees. Plus, having fewer people makes it much simpler to take everyone’s views into
consideration. If you try to employ a top-down approach in a start-up, people who originally had
huge areas of responsibility might begin to feel stifled. It’s tough to feel empowered exploring
new areas of opportunity with strong directives set from the top. 

If you work in a heavily regulated industry or a much larger company, consider a top-down
approach. However, be sure that you have other means of getting a pulse on the company and its
challenges so that management is not too separated from what’s happening on the ground. If you
need to move quickly, a top-down approach can ensure that people can move swiftly from
strategy to execution — so long as leadership truly understands the situation.
Keep in mind that as an organization evolves, its management style should evolve with it. As
organizations grow, expand into different areas and new types of leaders arrive, the process of
company goal-setting needs to be flexible to accommodate for these changes. 

Of course, these two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. For example, there might be certain
decisions that are best made at the top then filtered down and other areas where management
might need to rely heavily on team feedback to make a decision. 

What’s most important is maintaining as much communication and transparency about why you

are being more top-down or bottom-up in a decision-making process as possible. You don’t want
to seem inconsistent, erratic, or as if you say one thing but do another. Feel free to combine
elements of these two approaches until you find the right mix for your situation, your individual
company and team goals, and your leadership style.

5. Strategic management is more of a science

Because managers need to analyze the organization objectives in order to determine if the
organization is on the right track. Additionally, it may involve researches on the best execution
practices. For instance, the manager needs to examine qualitative and quantitative data about
external and internal environment before making a decision on which action to take. On the other
hand, strategic management is a science because it involves rational thinking, planning and
systematic evaluation of the action to be implemented. As a result, I am in favor of the statement
that strategic management is a science because during the formulation phase, environment
examination requires extensive analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data. Additionally,
the organization formulate assumptions and test them and the vital thing is that the organization
requires scientific method to study the data before deciding on the best strategy to undertake
given the assumption formulated.. Finally, in order for the organization to succeed, it needs to
understand the market and this understanding expects it to have accurate information and analyze
it scientifically.

Despite the fact that research is expensive, time consuming and multifaceted, it does not mean
that organization should keep away from it. I recommend that the organizations use simple
approaches to obtain data and information required for effective strategic management.