Corporate Mission

1. Strategic Planning
Roger Bradburn

2. Learning Objectives
By the end of this session students should be able
to:
 Understand how communicating mission and
vision is critical to strategic success.
 Understand the role of the strategist/leader in
the strategic process.
 Analyse the strategic approach of a business
and recognise the values underpinning it.

3. Required Reading
Carpenter and Sanders, (2009) Strategic
Management (2nd Edition) Person
International (Part one - chapter two)

4. Strategic Planning
Week 2
Corporate Mission, Vision, Values and
Goals.

5. Strategic Planning
 In this class we will discuss the ideas of Mission,
Vision, Values and Goals.
 Before we do, we will consider some key
questions about the strategists of the company.

6. Strategic Planning
Strategists.
 These are the people who make decisions
in a company.
 These may be at the CEO level, SBU level
or operational level.
 Strategists in companies typically have a
number of roles that may conflict.

7. Strategic Planning
For example: maximising profits,
developing the company in the long term,
maintaining good morale in the business
and having good relationships with
stakeholders may all require different and
conflicting strategies!

8. Strategic Planning
Vision v Mission.
 Some companies have a vision and a
mission. Vision statements tend to be
“blue sky” statements – where the
company would like to be in an ideal
world. However, the terms are often
interchanged.

9. Strategic Planning
 What is clear is that the key role of the
CEO is to develop a long term view of
what the company is about and the
markets within which it should be
operating.
 This requires a number of actions:

10. Strategic Planning
1. Develop the Mission Statement.
2. Disaggregate the Mission Statement.
3. Develop Objectives from the Mission
Statement.

11. Strategic Planning
Very broadly, the Mission Statement needs
to:
 Serve as a definition of the business the
organisation is in.
 Be clearly understood by employees.
 Provide a focus of its activities.

12. Strategic Planning
 Some Real Examples!
“ McDonald's vision is to be the world's best
quick service restaurant experience. Being
the best means providing outstanding
quality, service, cleanliness, and value, so
that we make every customer in every
restaurant smile."

13. Strategic Planning
 Some Real Examples! – Sainsbury’s
"Our mission is to be the consumer's first
choice for food, delivering products of
outstanding quality and great service at a
competitive cost through working faster,
simpler, and together."

14. Strategic Planning
 Some Real Examples! – Levi Strauss
"We will market the most appealing and
widely worn casual clothing in the world.
We will clothe the world."

15. Strategic Planning
 You will note that these examples – and
others that you might look at – will tend to
emphasise the values of the business.
Essentially what it considers important and
why.

16. Strategic Planning
 Some key questions we might ask:
What stages of production do we control?
What is the production scope of the business?
Do we control the marketing/distribution
channels?
What is our market position?

17. Strategic Planning
 Some key questions:
What is the breadth/focus or our business?
What benefits are we giving to our customer?
What market segments are we targeting?

18. Strategic Planning
 Deriving the Mission Statement.
What is the market stance of the business?
Are we a:
 Market Leader?
 Market Challenger?
 Market Follower?
 Market Nicher?

19. Strategic Planning
 The Mission Statement will also be very
much stakeholder/responsibility related.

20. Strategic Planning
 What are our responsibilities to our
stakeholders?
 What are our approaches to Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR)?
 How do we manage risk?

21. Strategic Planning
 Disaggregating the Mission Statement.
Below the Mission Statement will also be
departmental or functional mission statements
that relate to the upper level but focus on the
lower.

22. Strategic Planning
 Objectives.
Essentially about what we have to do to
achieve the Mission.
Objectives need to be set in terms of
measurable performance targets
Provide accountability and measures of
performance.

23. Strategic Planning
 Objectives come in several forms:
Strategic – becoming a market leader.
Financial – increasing sales by 10%
SBU - Increasing market share.
Sales – penetrating a specific market
segment.
Production – reduce costs by 5%.

24. Strategic Planning
 Characteristics of Objectives.
Should be credible to motivate.
Should be achievable.
Should be motivating for our staff.
Should meet the needs of our stakeholders.

25. Strategic Planning
 Types of Strategic Approach – from Miles
and Snow (1978) categories.
Prospector.
Analyser.
Defender.
Reactor.

26. Strategic Planning
 Prospector
Focuses on new market opportunities,
acquisitions etc. Emphasis is on the new
rather than on the internal organisation.

27. Strategic Planning
 Analyser
Uses sophisticated internal information
systems to review all options. Focuses on
cost savings and efficiency improvement.

28. Strategic Planning
 Defender
Looks to maintain current position without
looking at new opportunities. Looks to hold
what we have. May well suffer from Strategic
Drift.

29. Strategic Planning
 Reactor
Deals with circumstances as they arise.
Typical market follower strategy.
Can we do what other people are doing but
cheaper, better etc?

30. Strategic Planning
 The Gap Concept.
A great deal of forming strategy is about
identifying gaps between where we are now
and where we want to be.

31. Strategic Planning
 The Gap Concept.
There are two steps in identifying
performance gaps:
Deciding a desired future state of the
business – where do we want to be in the
future?
Asking what will happen if no action is taken.

32. Strategic Planning
 The Gap Concept.
Ideally, objectives should be set that ensure
the closing of gaps.
However, projecting how a company might
perform in the future is very difficult.

33. Strategic Planning
 The Gap Concept.
Many companies use the concept of
Scenarios – an example from Shell is given in
the text. These are essentially a range of
“What if” statements.

34. Strategic Planning
 Once a gap has been identified three
questions can be tackled:
Does the gap arise because of external or
internal factors?
In simple terms – are we being driven by a
changing environment or is it that we need to
change the management of our resources?

35. Strategic Planning
 Once a gap has been identified three
questions can be tackled:
Does the company have the potential
resources to close the gap?
Questions here might include financial and
human resources.

36. Strategic Planning
 Once a gap has been identified three
questions can be tackled:
Can a strategy be developed which can close
the gap?

37. Strategic Planning
 Some examples of Gap Factors:
External factors might include competitor
action.
Government action.
Declining or growing markets/life cycles.
Changing economic conditions.

38. Strategic Planning
Ends and Means
 A key factor in strategy is that the ends
and means are not the same. What is
achieved will be different to how it is
achieved and both are clearly important.

39. Strategic Planning
Ends and Means
 Our objective may be to achieve an ROI of
say, 15% but this may be achieved in
many ways:
 Improving quality.
 Reducing costs
 Improving the morale of the workforce.
Etc.

40. Strategic Planning
Financial Objectives:
 May be achieved by using a range of
financial tools such as ROI, Net Present
Value etc.
 These tools may be useful but may distort
reality as we have discussed.

41. Strategic Planning
Social Objectives
 Companies exist to make profits as
supported by the views of Friedman and
his followers. However,
 It also be argued that companies exist to
support their stakeholders and that
objectives should be consistent with this
view.

42. Strategic Planning
Stakeholder Mapping:
 Is the process of identifying the
stakeholders that really matter to us and
those that have the greatest impact on
what we do.
 Some will have a high priority and others
will have a major influence on us.

43. Strategic Planning
Ethical Considerations.
 The pressure to develop corporate
responsibility is considerable.
 The key question here is, what
responsibilities do a company have,
beyond making profits?
 Just because something is legal, does it
make it OK?

44. Strategic Planning
Conclusions.
In this lecture we have considered the value
of Mission, Vision and Objectives. I think we
have noted that these are critical in the
formation of strategy and are very much
related to the culture and values of the
organisation. In the next lecture we will
consider the external environment.