Most companies' vision and mission statements are useless.  Where as a good vision statement can inspire loyalty, hard work and innovation, most of the framed statements hanging on the walls of businesses are nothing more than a description of what the company does.

The kind of "vision" statement to which I am referring usually look something like this:

...to be the leading supplier of [insert product or service] at the best possible price with the best possible service...blah blah blah value...blah blah blah customer satisfaction & innovation....blah blah blah leader in our industry.

I always ask companies with statements like the above what they think the vision statements on their competitors' walls say.  Eerily similar I imagine.   

A good mission or vision statement is just that, a statement of a vision - a look ahead into the future.  A vision statement is an articulation of a view of the world that your company and your people are working towards, not what they are expected to do now.

But the vision alone is not enough.  Given your vision of the future, how, specifically, will your company work to achieve it?  These guidelines or values should be written in a manner by which people, at all levels, can be held accountable.  "Innovation," "authenticity" and "integrity" are not measurable (and frankly things like integrity should be a given...anyone in your company lacking this quality shouldn't be given a mission statement, they should be given a pink slip). 

Here are some guidelines to writing a vision or mission statement that works. 

Why do you do what you do?

• Begin your statement with "I believe..."
  • Your Vision Statement should start with what you believe, why you do what you do -- your purpose or cause on a level higher than what your company does or makes.  Try starting your statement with the words "I believe..."  or "I envision a world..."  You'll find what follows will be quite different than what you expect.   You can always take out those opening words later, if you want.

• Don't write more than two lines for what you believe.
  • This is not the place for long-winded descriptions about what your company does or its value to the world.  The opening of your statement shouldn't require more  than a line or two to capture the world you imagine.

• Leave what you sell out of it.
  • This is a statement of your vision, not what you do.  Nowhere in Southwest Airlines' mission does it say anything about being an airline.  What you do is important, but not at this level.

How do you do it?

• Explain How you think and act.
  • Now that you've articulated Why you you do what you do, it's time to explain how you do it.  There are probably two to five distinct characteristics or values  about How your company operates that makes you unique in the way you are going about realizing your vision.
  • These ideas  should not be amorphous.  They should be specific and actionable.  They should be written in a way that people can be held accountable.  "Innovative," for example, is hard to hold people accountable to.  You can't say to someone, "be innovative."  How do you know when they are?  But you can say, "always have options to any solution you offer,"  for example.

What do you do?

• What are you doing to bring your vision to life?
  • You've articulated your belief and how you go about doing what you do, now explain what you do - the things you sell that will serve as proof to the world of Why and How you do things.

Put your business goals on another piece if paper.

• No matter how robust,  your business goals belong somewhere else.  They are the result of pursuing your vision and holding yourself accountable to your guiding principles or values.   Your goals may serve to motivate a few people in management, but most people are not inspired by financial objectives.  They are, however, inspired by a pursuit greater than any one person or product.

Only if you're interested, here's my vision statement:

I work to inspire people  to do the things that inspire them. 

And no matter what I do in order to realize my vision, I hold myself accountable to five guiding principles:

1. Be  unconventional:   Shake things up.  Offer new perspectives.  Only when you see or hear things in a different way can you see greater opportunities.
2. Keep it simple: If people can more easily understand something, then it's more likely to get done.
3. Collaborate:  Work with others, because they know more and have already made all the mistakes.
4. Silver-line it: Look for the silver lining in every cloud.  It's better to amplify what works than obsess with fixing what doesn't work.
5. Act!:  Action is always better than inaction.

To realize my vision: I write about how to inspire action.  I consult companies how build corporate cultures that  inspire their employees.   I guide companies how to create marketing and communications that inspire customers to buy from them over and over and over.  I speak to anyone who will listen.  I work to be my own best case study, practicing everything I preach.

The driving force behind innovation is creativity.  That's not such a profound realization.  But where does creativity come from?  I'm always fascinated when organizations have "creative sessions" to come up with ideas. Putting everyone in a room together for an hour or two with the purpose of coming up with a new idea or a new way of seeing things is not necessarily the best way to come up with new ideas.

Think about it.

How many of your best ideas happen driving to work or standing in the shower? Or watching a movie or reading a book that has nothing to do with the problem you just solved? The fact is, our brains are processing vastly more information than we're even aware of. And sometimes it's making connections between things that we weren't even looking for at the time. 

Jarbas Agnelli, for example, created music simply by seeing. "I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires," he said, "I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes." Below is what he created. There is no Photoshop edit, it is the exact picture he saw.

Creativity comes from curiosity. The more curious you are about the world, the more you experience and learn. The more you experience and learn, the more connections your brain is able to make. And with more connections, you can find new solutions to problems or just see things no one else can see.  In other words - you can be more creative.
 

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo

 There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak. Just because someone can hear, doesn’t mean they are listening or that they know how to listen. My grandfather would sit on the couch and watch a cricket match on TV, catch every word from the commentator’s mouth, but wouldn’t “hear” my grandmother when she called from the other room. Oh, he could hear her alright… he just wasn’t listening.

Listening is active. At its most basic level, it’s about focus, paying attention. When a teenager seems to be staring out the window when being spoken to, a parent or teacher will ask: “Are you listening to me?” What the parent or teacher really means is: “Are you paying attention?”

At its most effective level, however, listening goes far beyond simply paying attention. Becoming a “good listener” is a skill that requires practice. At this level, listening means trying to find meaning in what you hear. It is not simply about concentrating on what is being said to you; it is the active pursuit of understanding.

Good listeners have a huge advantage. For one, when they engage in conversation, they make people “feel” heard. The people with whom they are speaking“feel” that someone really understands their wants, needs and desires. And for good reason; a good listener really does care to understand.

A good listener must be good at asking questions. It is near impossible to perfectly understand what someone truly wants or needs on the first go, not because they are not being clear (though that may sometimes be the case), but because very often people don’t express their real needs.

For example, an employee demands more money for their job because they feel they are underpaid for the work they are doing. Someone who knows how to listen won’t simply hear them, they will want to understand the root of their feelings.  They will want to ask questions. A good listener will want to understand the reason they feel unappreciated.

With the right questions, it will be revealed that it is the job itself, not the money that is the cause of the disgruntlement. They feel that they are struggling because they don’t have the skill set to handle the responsibility they are given, for example. It is training that they need. Simply paying them more will address the symptom, but only when additional tools or training are provided will the employee feel looked after in the future. And only then will their true value to the organization be fully realized.

Here are some tips to practice to become a good listener:

1. Work to understand: Consciously work to understand the reason someone is telling what they are telling you. Don’t assume what they say and what they mean are the same. And don’t assume that the solutions they offer will fix the issue.
2. Ask specific questions: Don’t simply ask, “What do you mean by that?” after every statement someone makes. That’s frustrating for the person talking to you and it still relies on them to find the right words. Ask questions specific to the things they say. For example, if someone says, “I want to be a doctor,” instead of asking why they want to be a doctor, ask them what kind of doctor they want to be. When they answer, ask them what it is about that specialty that interests them. Very quickly you will get a much clearer picture of the kind of person this is and what their strengths are just from listening closely and asking pointed questions.
3. Restate what has been stated: Practice saying, “Let me see if I understand” to someone, then restate what you think they mean in your own words. They will either agree or disagree with you. More importantly, they will feel heard and you will work together to find clarity and common understanding.

The great people managers, those that seem to have a pulse on their people, may have an innate sense of what’s going on in the world or a Magic 8-Ball that tells them the answers. But it’s more likely that they know how to listen. The same goes for innovation or customer service. The companies that know how to listen are the ones that develop products and serve people based on their ACTUAL wants, needs and desires and just what they say in market research.

My dear friend Bill Ury recently spoke at a TEDx event about his concept of the third side.

Bill is an anthropologist who set out to find a ways to achieve world peace.  In the process, he learned it was all about how we communicate - more specifically, how we negotiate.  In the process he became one of the most sought-after negotiators in the world - working for large corporations and governments.  He's been involved in almost every peace negotiation you can think of yet he remains humble and human.

Take time to listen to Bill's talk and support his not-for-profit - Abraham Path.

If you're interested in more from Bill, check out his books: Getting To Yes and Power of A Positive No.

Usain Bolt knows why he needs to win races and shatter records. Though money and fame are nice additions, what drives him is something much, much bigger. It's even bigger than winning each individual race.

The 23-year old, gold-shoe wearing Jamaican track star became a household name after he shattered multiple world records at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. When asked what his secret is, he replies with surprising humility, "my secret's just hard work and dedication." Great advice, for sure, but it takes more than just hard work to become such a dominating force in sports...or in anything, for that matter. It takes a sense of purpose so big, it's  hard to measure. It may even sound like fantasy. And for Usain Bolt, he wakes up everyday to, as he puts it,  "become a legend."

It is this sense of purpose, the sense of WHY Bolt works as hard as he does that makes such a difference. Whereas other competitors train for a race or for an event, Bolt trains for something that he may not fully appreciate in his lifetime, because inherent in legend-status, is that it will outlive him.

Though each race he wins and each record he breaks matter, they are not the end goals. They represent the milestones he needs to pass to achieve his very big dream.

In our careers and in our businesses we often limit our ability to succeed because we set goals with relatively short time lines.  We work hard to achieve these goals, then set new goals the following year. But quarterly or annual goals are just too short. How many people or organizations are planning to achieve something that will be fully realized after they die?

A strategy of setting a goal, reaching it and working to achieve the next goal does not inherently prevent progress or success, but it limits the ability to make massive leaps. It also begs the question, why are those short-term goals important? "To be successful" or "to grow a business" are insufficient as answers. Everyone who races against Bolt is running to win races, but few, if any, are running to become legends.

Quarterly or annual goals should not be the goals, they should serve to mark the measurable progress we make on our way to something much grander.  The Wright brothers didn't set out to simply make a flying machine, they set out to change the world.  Steve Jobs didn't just want to build a successful computer company, he set out to, as he put it, "make a dent in the universe." That ability to see beyond the year, to see beyond the money and the profit, to see how the world will change because of what you achieve, is what makes legends.

Consider this analogy: If your goal is to drive 350 miles in one day, you may achieve your goal, you may even drive a little further. You'll be elated that you reached your goal or surpassed it.  Your victory may even encourage you to attempt to drive 400 miles the next day. But to become a legend, you need a lofty, almost unrealistic and quite bombastic vision of the final destination...not just one of the way points.  It's not about getting 350 miles in a day, it's about seeing yourself laying on the beach on an island in the South Pacific. In one single swoop, you see the 350-mile achievement as small and slow. You are instantly able  to see opportunities that others miss.  Where others see the need to drive faster, you see the need to jump on an airplane.

Usain Bolt doesn't run each race because he wants to win. He wins each race because he wants something so much grander. And it is this ability, to understand why each race matters towards achieving the grand plan, that he will indeed become a legend.