Corporate Wanderings

RE: http://www.cio.com/leadership/buzz/column.html?ID=9311

There are still companies in the Stone Age for whom the opening statement is not true. "It’s taken at face value that mission-vision-values statements are worth doing."

My first problem is convincing anyone at my company that corporate values, having and communicating a mission, and having a long-term vision are of any worth at all. Here, they are seen as fluff, and we have no time for that. We are too busy doing "whatever it takes" rather than assigning roles. We are too busy "stepping up to the plate" instead of asking whether the task that we are doing is worth doing at all. We are too busy pleasing our clients' whims to determine whether or not doing so is in our or their long-term interest. We are too busy saying "yes" to see if what we just promised will cost us more than it will make us or the client.
I not only suggest that doing missions, visions, and values in a company correctly is worthwhile, I would settle for a company that would at least try and do it poorly at first.