A Marketplace of Ideas

I saw a proposed vision for a Health System the other day that got me to thinking: Why aren’t corporate missions, visions and values more in tune with the brand and brand experience? Is it because missions, visions and values are crafted behind closed doors in the boardroom, while the brand is the domain of the marketing department?

Perhaps marketers understand that customers don’t care about an uninspiring mission or vision, so why connect them to the brand? And who tells the employees that when they practice organizational values in serving the mission that they’re actually defining the brand experience for the customer? Who is connecting the dots?

The proposed vision I saw was this. Locally based…exceptional healthcare.

Now I do admire it for its simplicity. And I understand that a lot of conversation, I’m sure rich with emotion, went into that statement. But frankly, it tastes a bit Vanilla to me. What health system wouldn’t say that? I’m not inspired.

So I ask, shouldn’t a vision be aspirational to make the brand inspirational? Wouldn’t employees and patients alike respond to a brand with a vision of making their area the healthiest in the country by 2020. And how might that drive the brand experience? Sure, it would require the organization to be creative in its metrics. But we know, what gets measured gets done.

I think mission, vision and values should be more than informational. They should be transformational. And they should drive the brand experience.

Now that inspires me.

Where have you seen a disconnection between mission/vision/values and the brand? What do you think the barriers are to integration? I’d love to hear from you.