Mission Statements Critical For Family-Owned Businesses.
Mission Statements can be a highly effective communication tool for family businesses - a way to connect the values of the family to their business.
(PRWEB) March 11, 2004 -- At a recent work shop on mission statements for family businesses, Don Schwerzler, founder of Atlanta-based Family Business Institute and their on-line organization Family Business Experts explained how mission statements can be a powerful communication tool for family businesses. They help connect the family's values to the business.
But the process for developing the vision and mission statements can also be a precursor for potential problems that could turn into family feuds that disrupt the succession planning process.
We find that company mission statements cause one particular area of difficulty for many family businesses. Confusion arises from mixing family and business dreams and goals. The best and simplest solution we have found with our clients for this problem is to have the family develop a family vision statement and family mission statement. This way, there is a valid outlet for family issues and they do not necessarily have to be included in the family business' statements.
In the first place, there is the vision - the dream. It's where you want to go, what you want to be. It's perfectly appropriate for your dream to be unattainable, to be just out of reach. It's what you reach for. The vision statement is where you describe this dream for your family business.
A company mission statement is where you start to show how this dream is going to become a reality. You identify major goals that must be accomplished. You identify how you are going to operate as you go about meeting the major goals. You identify significant factors that will be necessary for you to reach those goals: the products or services you will provide, the kind of people you will need.
Unlike the dream, they should reflect achievable goals - they can be challenging, a real stretch, but if they aren't achievable, they're not goals for a mission, they're still a vision or dream.
We recommend 160 Key Business Questions from Wizard Publishers. It contains best practices benchmarking in a handy question form. It can be downloaded immediately and used as a valuable reference to ensure you identify all the goals and factors that you should include in your company's mission statement.
www.family-business-experts.com
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