The importance of Mission

I was once charged with turning round a business that was in financial difficulties, one of my first tasks was to understand what made its customers keep coming back. I discovered that over 30% of the added value our customers benefited from was our expertise, and we were giving it away; the customers were getting a free service. Furthermore, there were no processes or systems in place that enabled part of the service to be measured or charged for; the challenge was therefore made more difficult because, apart from plugging the operational gap, the customer had got used to the free service and saw no reason to suddenly start paying for it.

This situation existed because no one had really taken the time to review the business from the value stream perspective. Even though the pattern of its activities had changed over time it had just kept doing the same things because it had always done it that way; it had not defined and reviewed its MISSION and it had not recognised that part of what it treated as overhead was, in fact, added value work.

World-class businesses routinely monitor changes in the market, identify opportunities and innovate to meet emerging needs; they identify and review their mission as a matter of course. From that they continually review and refine their internal processes and procedures, not only to improve current activities, but also to respond to changes and emerging trends in the market place.

In the situation described we recognised that our added value was not only the products that we manufactured, but also the validation and correction of customers’ information and the management of changes. By clarifying and evaluating the processes involved we were able to identify costs, develop a proper pricing and charging model and then develop systems to implement it.

It all sounds like basic common sense; the point is that the situation described is not an uncommon scenario. Do you think you might have lost sight of the wood for the trees?