September Roundup – Does Mission Matter?

This guest post by Pat La Londe, ASQ Fellow and incoming ASQ board chair, asked the question how often is a company’s mission considered when choosing a retailer or business partner.  Following a global brand and reputation study, ASQ found that many respondents rated organizational mission as highly important in their consideration.
Throughout the month of September and into October, ASQ bloggers reflected on mission and the value placed on it.

Blogger Tim McMahon responded that vision, leadership and values are key, that companies must determine what its vision and direction will be, and management must decide what core elements are to be deployed.
Daniel Zrymiak did not consider that mission mattered since missions are aspirational. He wrote that he is more inclined to look at the track record and reputation as a predictor of future expectations.
Scott Rutherford also took issue with some aspects of Pat’s blog, adding that he had a different take of Mission, Vision and Values.  “Maybe it’s me but I was taught that an organization’s vision is what they strive to be and the mission is the how the organization executes the vision…Vision is aspirational, mission is clarity, and values are the bedrock from which to move.”

John Hunter writes that it doesn’t matter if it is just words on paper that has no impact on how business is done. And sadly that is more common than having a mission that actually matters because it actually guides how decisions are made and how the business delivers products and services.
Luciana Paulise suggests that mission does matter and it should start working together with the purpose the new sharing economy.  She added that more and more companies are starting to focus not only on defining a mission, but also a purpose, which emphasize how the organization should view and conduct itself.

Author Aimee Siegler concluded that mission does matter and there is no way you’re going to be able to get where you’re trying to go if you don’t know why you’re going there.

Dr. Manu Vora concurred with Pat’s views and offered that the mission should be realistic and not a pie-in-the-sky statement.

Other Influential Voices Blog Responses:

Rajan Thiyagarajan responded to Arun Hanrahan’s post on Knowledge Management commenting on recent trends that are helping organizations transform knowledge management.

One Response to How Does Knowledge Management Complement Quality?

1. Jim Judge says:

September 16, 2015 at 10:22 am

Interesting that this is capturing an audience once again. In 2000 my Masters Thesis was on implementing a KM system in a QA environment. Actually bought the software and tried to make it work. Discovered that folks didn’t want to share their knowledge as that was considered the key to them keeping their jobs.

Hope that this generation will accept the concept now. There are so many advantages.

from A View from the Q http://asq.org/blog/2015/10/september-roundup-does-mission-matter/