Lurking Values

My personal mission statement has evolved when I began thinking about it during a Covey exercise that I participated in when Accenture put their entire management team through the Stephen Covey Seven Habits training (1993).  The other day J.Y. sent me his personal strategic plan, which included not only a mission statement, but his Vision,Values, Goals, Objectives and Measures (and all on one concise page).  Boy, did I feel inadequate in my strategic consulting background by ignoring all the additional "required" strategic planning methodology documentation outputs. 

I concluded I needed to "step it up" in my Life Planning consulting capabilities (thanks to J.Y.)

Vision?
Every time I have worked with clients on Strategic Planning the question arises - what's the difference between Mission and Vision?  Which comes first and why do you need both? The best answer I can come up with is the Vision is more the future dream (possibly unattainable) while the mission is the day to day management of activities, priorities, and trade-offs you make as you strive for the dream. Which comes first is not important - however stay tuned as I ponder what my Vision is.

Values?
I like Daniel Taylor's description in his book "Creating a Spiritual Legacy" -  "Human beings are values-soaked creatures.  We cannot think, speak, or act for more than a few minutes at a time without revealing a value - a preference for one thing over another or a ranking of priorities ....  every choice we make announces a value.  I choose this and not that because .... And in every because there lurks a value."  Hmmmm - writing down my actual historical values (vs my hopeful future values) may reveal things I prefer to stay hidden away in a lurking fashion. 

Goals/Objectives/Measures?
Actually, I do a decent job documenting each of these annually (with help from A.S. at Vistage).  Vistage provides me an annual planning and accountability opportunity with annual "spotlight" presentations.   Also yearly in December (we will do this again on Thursday) A.S. challenges each of us to write down annual Goals/Objectives/Measures. The problem is these are too tactical (being annual) and not strategic enough (hence my decade planning presentation last month). 

Are you planned out yet?  Maybe Patience (or  is it Procrastination) is one of my lurking values.  :)


P.S.  M.L. my Vistage Buddy (if he didn't say this he should have) humorously described my obsession with life planning.  P-ersistently   L-ooking   A-t   N-avel  (P.L.A.N.).