MVV (Part I)

It is the time of the year again. Time when many schools are now going into the review of their activities in the last 10 months and also a time of reflection.

During this time is also when schools will revisit their mission, vision, and values.

Today, we'll discuss why a clearly defined mission, vision, and values are important not only for any organization but also for individuals.

Firstly, let's talk a little about mission, vision, and values (MVV) from an individual's perspective. Before we can discuss this, we will need to understand that we must always work at all four-levels of a person. Working at just one or two levels will create an unbalanced life, hence the need to work at all four-levels is to enable one to look at a person in a holistic fashion.

So what exactly are the four-levels? They are body-mind-heart-spirit. According to the Principles of Engaged Mastery, these four-levels are self-discipline, vision, rectitude, and leave a legacy. In Covey's language, they are the 4Ls; live, learn, love, and leave a legacy.

Why all four-levels? Let's say, you only focus on the 'heart', and all you do is just to be a good person, someone with the right character, if you'd like, but without the skills (body), knowledge (mind), and purpose (leave a legacy); you will just remain a good person. But others may not entrust you with an important task, even though they know of your good intentions, but you just don't have the skills or knowledge to allow you to complete the task.

Similar examples can be presented for the other aspects, but for economic reasons, we'll just leave it at the example above.

So, how does it link to MVV? And besides, MVV is three factors, but here we're talking about four-levels? Reasons follow immediately.

Mission, at the individual level, is linked to "leave a legacy" or purpose in life. Basically, we're talking about why do we exist. What's God's reason for putting us here on earth. We, I believe, are all here for a purpose, whether you believe it or not, we do have a reason for our existence. The reason may not be obvious but it is there. It can be as simple as to be here to bring up my children to be good and responsible people (for a mom) or it can be as huge as eradicating poverty (for Mother Teresa).

The reason must be uncovered. It will reveal itself to you, but you must do the work of uncovering it. Without this purpose, we'll basically just live day-to-day and then wonder what happened?

In the context of an organization, the purpose of the organization's existence can be found in its mission statement. So for those of us who are serious about this, know that a mission statement is not some lofty words we put up to impress our staff, stakeholders, investors, or customers.

In the private sector context some people think businesses exist to make money. Its like we live to eat (as opposed to 'eat to live'). True, when there's no margin, there's no mission. No matter how good your intentions are (just like the examples we discussed above), without a strong offering and a sound strategy, you will be out of business in no time. But making profits being the only purpose can be disastrous, for everyone.

Unless, we follow the Japanese, as Mr Inamori mentioned that profits, in Japanese kanji characters mean "mouke", which is made up of two others, "shinjiru" meaning "to trust" and "mono" meaning "people". I found this to be really interesting as it offers us a different perspective about "profits". He said that, the more customers can trust us, the more business we'll have. Having said that, he believes that it should be more than trust. The business must earn customers' respect.

And to be able to earn customers' respect, we'll need to look at the other three areas of 'body-mind-heart' at both the individual and organizational perspectives.

Till then, let us reflect, today, on our 'mission' in life, what is our purpose and how do we want to 'leave a legacy'.