Why a Strategic Story is Worth Much More Than a Mission and Vision

The vision of a company is, if we are to believe some books, essential. Organizations sometimes spend months drafting it. But do these visions and missions (sometimes full of buzzwords) actually influence business results? Practice often teaches us otherwise. We find the strategic story that the organization tells much more essential. A good story gives employees support and elicits statements like “yes! that’s us”.

developing and refining for so long [..] that the end result was no longer recognizable or memorable to anyone

strategisch_verhaalThis topic came onto our radar through two situations we encountered in the past month. One took place at a company in business services, the other in industry. Both situations have much in common and demonstrate the invaluable value of a strategic story.

We were asked to assist in the implementation of a new positioning and brand strategy for a business service provider. Everything had already been worked out and conceived, up to the design of the website. It only became clear that they had made a false start after the chosen brand name was dropped and there was no strategic story connecting the other factors. The formulated vision and mission proved inadequate.

The second situation was at an organization that wanted to involve us in their long-running mission and vision process. The responsible project team had been developing and refining for so long that the end result was no longer recognizable or memorable to anyone. This became apparent when we asked the question; “So, what is the vision you formulated?” To which the answer was that they did not have the paper with those few sentences on them and therefore did not know.

From these and other examples, we can derive 5 reasons why a strategic story has more value than a mission/vision:

  • Humans are made to remember stories
  • A strategic story enables employees to test any action: “Does this action fit what we want to achieve?”
  • The story contains the building blocks that can be used to shape or assess the positioning
  • Employees finally have a clear idea of what they can tell friends about their employer and work during social gatherings
  • We usually work from big to small, so a vision and mission are much easier to formulate from a strategic story than the other way around.