Vision, Mission and Strategy – Are they really important for a successful business?

by Sarah Bonnekamp

A precise developing and wording of a vision and mission are important steps for a business to set a normative frame for employees’ behavior within an organization. But how is it possible to create a culture in which employees “live” quality in all their actions—where they are passionate about quality as a personal value?

Aleksandra Efimova loves dancing and she used her passion to create a business. She started as a young entrepreneur in 1998 her own business, producing and selling professional dance shoes, apparel, accessories and educational materials based in Chicago. For her it is essential, that she can pass her passion on to customers, employees and all other stakeholders of her business. She used the tool of a vision and mission in order to show all organizational members and the world the passion and the sense of her business. Russian Pointe always offers the most beautiful, highest-quality, best-fitting shoes; to share expertise with the dance community; to support the arts; and to continue to set and maintain the highest standards in customer service. These sentences describe perfectly the benefit of her doing and uniqueness of her business which has to be lived by the employees. A vision has the aim to encourage the employees to achieve the defined goal in the future. It was impressive to see, that Aleksandra Efimova combined and defined her passion for dancing on a very clear and consequent way in her vision and mission.

Additionally, to the vision also the Mission explains the passion and the sense of her business and the way to act. A mission sometimes is also defined as a corporate principle and has mainly a communicational function. Russian Pointes’ mission is the following: “to provide elegant dance products and inspire dancers to lead extraordinary lives.” The word “inspire” should communicate the passion of the business to employees, customers, suppliers and all other stakeholders. Therefore, Russian Pointe shows their mission on the website, in email signature and in campaigns. Also a lot of other companies such as the Alzheimer’s Association, Google or WHU in Germany have a clear mission on their homepage. On the one hand as we already know, Google was a startup before it came very famous and for everyone accessible. WHU on the other hand is the most know and best educational university in Germany, who defines their own vision and mission on their homepage. I think this is a very helpful tool also for other companies such as startups to communicate the Mission to customers, suppliers and other stakeholders by stating it on the website and in the email signature.

From my own experience I know, that it is not that easy to develop a clear and consequent vision and mission for a business. We as a team had difficulties to find the right words for describing our vision/ mission precise and short. However, I think that, to develop a vision and mission as an entrepreneur is very helpful to be successful and Russian Pointe is one of the best examples, because it helps to create a qualitative organizational culture. 

The message of the vision and mission has to be translated into action in every single situation. It is not enough to communicate but is has to be taken into consideration in every decision and action. In my opinion, this is the point when a lot of companies fail because they formulate an unclear vision or mission or they have a clear one, but not act regarding to this values and believes. Making clear decisions regarding to the mission from the beginning onwards, makes it possible to built a culture of quality. Beginning with hiring people that have the same believes and personal views up to choosing the right key partners for a business are the right steps to build a complete organizational culture that acts regarding to the vision and mission of a company. In my opinion, the vision of supporting the art and the mission to provide dancers with high quality products gives Russian Pointe a clear guideline within the organizational culture. The organizational culture of Russian Pointe consists of values such as offering customers high quality and always knows what success means for them in order to improve the results. Strategic goals are core elements for Aleksandra Efimova to run a business. They clearly define the vision and mission for each important department or function, such as Marketing and product development. Therefore they can be described as the main guidelines for action within an organization and can measure the success of a company.

Aleksandra Efimova and her employees always evaluate their results and see what they can improve to get always better solutions or strategies in certain aspects. Regarding to the vision/mission they always know how should success look like inside each part, such as Marketing or product development. These steps are a very helpful adaption for other businesses such as startups to break the strategy down for each important part of the business and to make goals regarding our vision/ mission measurable and therefore approvable. „What can be measured and what can be improved“. This strategy built up a qualitative organizational culture and is the main reason why Russian Pointe has constantly growing and developed from a small business to a multi-million company. The culture described before will be also implemented in our own business because it helps to reach consistent growth. It is a type of culture that fits for many companies, not only for Russian Pointe. Especially the passion in what we do in our business is pretty close and we also concentrate on high quality. Additionally, the clear tasks and goals for each department can be adapted in order to measure and improve the actions. I would also implement a part into the culture of our business that concentrate on different types of employees in our company by building up segments regarding to what drives hard work. This gives us the possibility to address our employees in an individual way and ensure that they live our organizational culture.