We often hear: “A mission statement is all well and good, but these are all soft factors, aren’t they?” Modern, data-driven companies are no longer satisfied with this. The effectiveness of your company’s mission statement must also be made measurable. Only by checking whether the defined values are actually being put into practice can you justify and manage your investment in the mission statement process.

How can you measure this success? We’ll show you how to link soft factors to hard KPIs for corporate values, thereby proving in black and white that your mission statement is more than just a philosophy.

From value to key performance indicator: the link

The key lies in underpinning every value in the mission statement with specific, observable behaviours. From these behaviours, you derive measurable key performance indicators (KPIs). Here are a few examples:

How to carry out the assessment and check its effectiveness

1. Regular staff surveys: Conduct targeted surveys that focus directly on the values set out in the mission statement. Don’t ask: “Do you think openness is a good thing?”, but rather: “Do you feel safe when you report mistakes?” This provides insight into whether the values are taking root and being embraced within the corporate culture.
2. Behavioural observation at management levels: Mission statements often fail due to a lack of credibility on the part of leadership. Measure the effectiveness of the values by establishing feedback processes that assess whether managers are leading by example (e.g. through 360-degree feedback).
3. Analysis of HR metrics: As shown above, staff turnover, sickness absence and the quality of new hires are directly linked to the culture in practice. A strong, actively practised mission statement almost always has a positive impact on these hard metrics.
4. The role of visualisation: An unambiguously clear, visual mission statement, such as a dialog picture, provides a common ground. Because all employees have the same image in mind, it becomes easier to assess effectiveness, as there is no longer any room for interpretation. Discrepancies in understanding are reduced, and the measurement data becomes more meaningful.

Conclusion:

A successful corporate mission statement is not an end in itself. It is an active management tool that has a significant impact on your company’s success. By measuring your corporate values and linking them to clear KPIs, you not only demonstrate their value but also gain valuable insights for the continuous development of your corporate culture.

MISSION STATEMENT: VISION & VALUES

How do we manage to deliver our vision and strategy to our employees, to bring everyone to a common understanding and to embed them into the (future) work to ensure that our bank is aligned as stable, successful and future-proof? How do we manage to deliver the path of our vision and strategy with the same content into our house, without losing important integral facts, or rather, to create room for interpretation through a new choice of words? These questions gave us the idea to translate our formulated vision and strategy into a picture-based language, true to the adage: “a picture says more than 1,000 words.”
We, the Volksbank Bruchsal-Bretten eG, a medium-sized Volksbank in Baden, with total assets around €3.3bn and 526 employees. The one favorite scene does not exist for us, as the entire dialog picture reflects us, the Volksbank Bruchsal-Bretten, our engagement for the region, our acts, our vision and idea of the future.