Vision and mission in strategic planning

Tareq al-Suwaidan defines the vision as 'a mental picture of the organisation at a point in the future', like a balance sheet — a picture of the financial position at a point in time — except that the vision is a future picture of every aspect of the organisation, not only the financial; it is for him the most important element of strategic planning: written rightly the plan may come out right, written wrongly the plan certainly fails ^{1 2 3}.

He gives a practical method: the planning team fixes the key questions (number of employees, branches, sales, profit ratio, main products, rank among competitors, the technology to be used); each member answers them in writing individually; the answers are then collected and shown to all — what is agreed is passed over and what is disputed is discussed and voted on ^{4 5}. He says this method is not 'scientific' in the sense that two teams given the same information would not produce the same vision, and that management has no scientific method for setting a vision; strategic planning is to him both science and art, and the vision is the artistic part ^{6 7}. The vision can be summarised in a sentence everyone memorises — like Savola's '555' formula: five billion riyals in five years with five hundred employees — though he considers the step optional ⁸.

He defines the mission as a sentence or phrase summarising who we are and what we want, with ten criteria: clear and easy; short, no more than twenty words and preferably nearer ten; describing what the organisation offers, its audience and its strategic axis (what do you sell?); expressing distinction over competitors; containing one to three values at most; specific without vagueness and without numbers or details; achievable within the plan's duration; and inspiring pride in employees and customers ^{9 10 11}. He analyses real examples: the mission of his own American Creativity Academy in Kuwait ('the best education in the Middle East in an ethical and creative environment'), McDonald's mission, the Otis elevators mission — which he finds short of distinction and values — and the US Air Force mission, which repeated the notion of 'worldwide' four times deliberately ^{12 13 14}.

In the fourth episode al-Suwaidan distinguishes two terms people confuse: the strategic vision — five years for small organisations, fifteen to twenty for large ones — which is open to change and review, and the strategic intent: the essential reason for the organisation's existence, the purpose that would not change in a hundred years; the vision 'to make five billion profit', the intent 'to make profit' ^{15 16}.

He distinguishes vision, mission, slogan and logo: the slogan is advertising that picks one or two values and proclaims them, and can be changed every three to five years ^{17 18}.