When an organization proceeds to update its ideology (企業理念), a topic that often comes up is the framework (体系).
Should the structure be the mission, vision, and values (MVV)?
Should we add purpose to it so that it is purpose, mission, vision, and values (PMVV)?
Should we simplify it into purpose and values?
In this post, we are going to take a deep dive into ideology frameworks. We will share what we've learned from our research and our experience helping clients update their ideology frameworks. WE hope the contents will provide hints on how you approach re-designing your ideology framework.
When we talk about ideology, there are numerous terms. Here are a few examples:
Purpose
Mission
Vision
Values
Beliefs
Principles
Way
Founding Spirit
These terms have different meanings for their respective organizations. For us to break down the elements of ideology, we need a common shared terminology for these ideological elements.
In our case, to avoid confusion, we will not use the common labels, but instead refer the elements by their meaning.
All ideology frameworks have some or all of the following elements:
WHY
Why does the company exist?
PICTURE OF FUTURE WORLD
What society / world / future do we want to create?
PICTURE OF FUTURE US
What kind of organization do we aspire to be?
WHAT WE DO
What do we do to realize the above?
WHAT WE BELIEVE TO BE IMPORTANT
What are the ideas, principles, and beliefs that are important to us?
WHAT GUIDES OUR ACTIONS & BEHAVIORS
How should we act and behave?
ORIGIN
What are the ideas from our heritage that are important?
To repeat the above point, a company might have all of these elements or it may not. As for which elements an and organization should adopt in its ideology depends on the factors such as the growth stage of the company and its environment and context.
The key to updating ideology is not to first decide and look at the structure and framework, but to first understand what ideology elements the organization needs. This should drive the decision for how the framework should look.
Once you have decided which elements to incorporate, you can then proceed to decide on how to name these elements.
For example, some companies name the WHY as mission. Others name it as purpose. It is worth emphasizing. What we call these elements if trivial. The key is understanding what elements we need first.
For us at SMO, we believe that every ideology framework must have a WHY. For SMO, we call this WHY purpose.