THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2023 - MISSION, VISION, AND VALUE

 THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2023 - MISSION, VISION, AND VALUE

This week I’ve been looking at some different things - quality, mission, Malcolm Baldrige Award.  Today we’ll look at VALUE (the third part of Mission, Vision, and Value).

VALUE 

A values statement should be memorable, actionable, and timeless.  Consider these:

What do we stand for?

What behaviors do we value over all else?

How will we conduct our activities to achieve our mission and vision?

How do we treat members in our own organization and in our community?

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Here are two corporate examples of values:

Gusto:

Ownership mentality.

Don’t optimize for the short term.

We are all builders.

Go the extra mile.

Do what’s right.

Be transparent.

Etsy:

We commit to our craft.

We minimize waste.

We embrace differences.

We dig deeper.

We lead with optimism.

From: https://www.batonglobal.com/post/how-to-write-mission-vision-and-values-statements-with-examples)

Total Quality Love

Openness

Honesty

Outgoing

Friendly

Helpful

Kind

Understanding

Emphatic 

Now, let’s take this further and get into TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (or Total Quality Love).  

Do you ever get surveys?  TQM (and other quality management tools), need data to improve (“constantly and forever improve” Deming would say).  Three years ago, on a scale of 1 to 5 (where 5 is high), the organization was at 2.38; then two years ago, it was at 3.06, last year at 3.42, and this year at 3.62, the organization is showing significant improvement.  

For the Malcolm Baldrige award the organization should define its mission, vision, and values, and then with charts, and data tables, show that the organization is improving.  Throwing in statistical analysis, the data should show SIGNIFICANT improvement.  The organization's leadership and the staff have been working to improve.  

(Aside, I won’t go into it here, but improvement at the P< 0.05 is good, but P< 0.01 is fantastic.) 

For the Malcolm Baldrige organization, the team I was on had a tough case where the values needed to be better aligned with the mission and vision, and the data needed to be more significant in improving.  

If TOTAL QUALITY LOVE is to be a Malcolm Baldrige award winner, we would need to show significant improvement in most areas.

For example, I choose these values:

Openness

Honesty

Outgoing

Friendly

Helpful

Kind

Understanding

Emphatic 

In the category, “Understanding” on a five-point Lickert scale was at 4.32, then 4.33, then 4.32, then 4.35, then 4.37 would show overall improvement, and since the values are between very good (4.00) and excellent (5.00) that might be considered.

If a questionnaire showed significantly increasing values for Timeliness, that might be great!!  except Timeliness is not listed as one of the values.

Do your values match your vision?  Does your vision match your mission?  

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To be a quality person, and a quality organization, you need to self-reflect periodically.  As a professor, we had a pre-service week every fall before the first day of classes.  To be honest, some of the pre-service week was mundane or boring.  (TF and I would whisper about the exciting orations given by the campus leader, who wasn’t really the world’s greatest speaker - but he was an able administrator).  

Where are we?  Where are we going?  Who are we?  How can we be better?  What is our mission, and what are our visions for life?  And how do we put our mission and visions into play?  

How do we find God in what we do?  How do we find ways to let Love Win?  

This week, I’ve done about ½ of 1% of looking at MVV (Mission, Vision, and Values).  Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living".  As I age and I see my demise and dead coming soon, I am reflecting on my internal goals.   I am still a work in progress.  

Some Days it is one step forward and two steps back (or a million steps back); some days it is two steps forward and one step back (progress); and some days it is a million steps (and thoughts) ahead and no steps back.  

Who am I?  (Who are you?) Where am I going? (Where are you going?) Am I really letting Love Win and Love Transform me?  (Or is it just tired rhetoric?)

Yes, I do believe:

LOVE WINS

LOVE TRANSFORMS

KAREN ANNE WHITE, ©, JANUARY 12, 2023