How Business Partners Can Create a Joint Vision

As a business owner, you likely understand the need to create a mission statement for your enterprise. The importance of articulating your mission statement to your employees, customers and yourself is clear. As a customer, you’ve seen the mission statements of other small-business sites posted on their establishment walls. Your personal mission may very well be what drove you to pursue your entrepreneurial dreams in the first place. Your company vision is what keeps you on the path when you are, as a client of mine once said, "up to your neck in alligators." A deeply felt mission gives you the strength and courage to hang in there for the long haul. A well-articulated mission helps you regain focus and equilibrium when conflicting demands on your time take you away from your stated purpose.

By AZRIELA JAFFE Startup.com

The planning process for a mission and vision statement takes a few hours, maybe even a full day or two of your time, but it will save many more hours in the long run. When you’re evaluating distribution alternatives, considering an expansion of your product line, brainstorming how to expand your client base or confronted with an employee-relations problem, knowing where you and your partner stand and having a joint vision — in writing — give you a strong foundation from which to work and the criteria for evaluating your decisions.

Discussing your mission isn’t enough. Writing it down is a ritual that helps to solidify your commitment and symbolically demonstrates your unity as a partnership. It isn’t my mission, but our mission; it isn’t my vision for the company, but ours. It isn’t the written mission or vision statement itself that contributes so much to strengthening your partnership — it’s the process you and your partner will undergo while creating that statement.

Buzzwords such as "growth," "profit," "success" and "quality product" mean different things to different people. Though you may assume that you and your partner mean the same thing when you say, "We want to bring a quality product to the market and make a lot of money," you could actually be operating in different universes. If you don’t take the time to discuss your goals and personal desires, you may discover, after investing many hours and thousands of dollars, that you and your partner are traveling separate paths.

Defining Your Mission

A mission statement is a road map for growing your business. It’s the compass that points you in the right direction and redirects you when you are veering off the path. When you and your partner are arguing over a decision that must be made, it’s the place you return to for help. According to Laurie Beth Jones, author of "The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life" (Hyperion, 1998), a mission statement has three simple elements: First, it’s no more than a single sentence long; second, it can be easily understood by a 12-year-old; and third, it can be recited from memory at gunpoint.

Some mission statements are longer than one sentence — up to a few paragraphs perhaps — but ideally you’ll be able to synthesize your mission statement into one sentence that you can say at a networking event when a prospective client or colleague asks, "So, what does your company do?" Try to avoid generic phrases such as, "We’re here to serve our customers," which is just rhetoric that doesn’t inspire, clarify or inform. A useful mission statement always communicates action, not just philosophy. And it does so in specific enough terms to be meaningful to you and your partner. Therefore, every mission statement includes at least one action verb.

Further, be as specific as you can in your discussion about whom you’re serving. To create a one-sentence mission statement, you may articulate the "who" in fairly general terms, but it’s still useful for you and your partner to first brainstorm the segments of your market. Be careful not to narrow your mission statement "who" to a one-product market or to a group of people who’ll buy from you for only a short period of time.

Articulating Your Vision

Visualizations are highly personal and individual, and yet, when two or more partners join together they must find a way to create a joint vision. A vision statement is an expression of what your life and work together will look, feel, sound and be like when you are fulfilling your mission statement. Written in the present tense, as if it has already been accomplished, a vision statement is filled with descriptive details and is always positive. Your vision statement can include a description of your ideal partnering relationship and hoped-for relationships with customers, clients, colleagues, employees and vendors. A vision statement articulates in detail how you’re making a difference in your clients’ lives, how you’re spending your time, what you’re feeling about your accomplishments, how much money you ‘re making, the lifestyle improvements that your business success has enabled and so much more.

Consciously creating and expressing a vision statement will feel like the least urgent task in front of you as a partnership — and yet, it can be one of the most fun and rewarding activities you can engage in. You can rely on this vision statement to pull you along and to keep you motivated when you hit the "quitting days" you will inevitably encounter. A vision statement expresses your individual and collective dreams in a way that will unify and energize you.

A few years ago, I created a collage to help me positively visualize making the transition from corporate human resource director to self-employed author, coach and speaker. I’m someone with little artistic ability, but I can cut out pictures from a magazine. One night, I surrounded myself with piles of old magazines and began cutting out images and words that appealed to me. I glued them together into a large collage — and created a "vision statement" that I had framed and hung on my office wall. With your partner, or separately, create a vision statement with magazine pictures, or any visual image that captures your hopes and dreams for the company you are growing together. When you have something that appeals to both of you, make sure it goes on the wall of your office or some place visible to both of you.

The second part of this process is to create a written vision statement. I recommend that you each write your own vision statement and then share it with each other. Look for the places in which your vision statements are synergistic, and places where they differ. Create a joint vision statement that articulates in one voice what you dream of together. Whereas the mission statement should be as brief as a sentence or short paragraph, the vision statement can be several pages long, depending on how much detail you get into. Take an evening out, over dinner or some brew, if that appeals to you, and let your imagination soar. Growing a business is such hard work — allow yourself this simple pleasure.

— Ms. Jaffe is the author of "Let’s Go Into Business Together: 8 Secrets to Successful Business Planning" (Career Press, 2001), from which this article was excerpted.

(This is just the first step- go to: Steps to Success http://matr.net/stepstosuccess.phtml )