Personal and Organization Charters

16 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2008

See all articles by James G. Clawson

James G. Clawson

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business

Abstract

Conversations about "business strategy," "vision," "goals," and "values" are often unclear because people fail to distinguish among these terms meaningfully. This short note presents a simple, powerful way of talking about the elements of a business strategy that comprise what we might call an organizational charter. The note discusses the sequencing and differences among "mission," "vision," "values," "strategy," and "operating goals" and their relationship to leadership. The note is useful in a business-strategy course or macro-OB module to create common language.

Excerpt

UVA-OB-0600

PERSONAL AND ORGANIZATION CHARTERS

Mission statement work is the single most important work because the decisions made there affect all other decisions.

—Stephen Covey

Leaders involved in strategic discussions often get confused by the strategic language. They begin to use “strategy,” “vision,” “mission,” “business,” “values,” and other related terms loosely or interchangeably, and that can lead to miscommunication and misdirection. I see this with clients all the time. The range and variety of strategic frameworks available surely contributes to it. Such confusion not only dissipates leadership energy, but it also confuses the members of the organization and depletes organizational energy. Developing your strategic thinking skills can help solve this problem. One way to do so is to work through what we will call a personal or organizational charter.

Charters

. . .

Keywords: leadership, organizational management, strategy formulation

Suggested Citation

Clawson, James G., Personal and Organization Charters. Darden Case No. UVA-OB-0600, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=910718 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.910718

James G. Clawson (Contact Author)

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business ( email )

P.O. Box 6550
Charlottesville, VA 22906-6550
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.darden.virginia.edu/faculty/clawson.htm

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