The Mission Statement - Believing in what you're doing

One of the major differences between business in America and Scandinavia is the mission statement. How business men relate to this concept can determine the success of a partnership. Understanding how your partner relates to the mission statement, how he or she thinks, can be the most valuable tool in cooperation. It can help you determine what props will need to be on the stage, what everyone needs to do their job. In these props, you find a representation for our motives, the goal and the activities to reach those goals. Understanding what motives a person has will help you have some idea what a partner will do with a prop, and how.

Of course the goal of any business is to make money, but this is unstated, understood with a nod between colleagues. When it comes down to what you and your company talks about at meetings and what you do, it will center around your mission statement. A basketball team is motivated by competition, by the fun in being the best in their region. That is the motive behind their activities. But a basketball team will become a professional team for the money it can make through ticket sales. If there was no money in playing basketball, the team would meet up for a weekend game and have a little fun before returning to their daily lives. In this example, the team's motivation for turning professional was monetary gain. With this goal comes activities, such as daily training, team management, marketing and ticket sales. Understanding the motives represented in each prop will help a partner to the team understand what part of these activities are motivated by the players having fun and what part is motivated by money and necessity. Like wise, understanding the differences in motivation between an executive at IBM and LG can help you understand what each will be willing to do for a partnership.

In the US, money is king. It is not to knock the US or the business culture there. People want to live the good life and are willing to work together to achieve great things in exchange for a bit of luxury. It can help settle differences between two rivals or two bitter combatants. People will believe in a mission statement if it brings them prosperity. An engineer at Boeing loves what he does, but he studied hard and took on professional manners for the prosperity it brings him. The same principle applies at all levels of employment in the US. You are a factory floor worker at Ford for the prosperity, not the love of what you are doing. You are an executive at Disney because you have a large paycheck, not because you love animation. The love either has for what they do is found in the activities that drove them to pursue these careers, but if they can do what they love on their time off with a paycheck, the larger the paycheck the better. In the end, money talks more than the profession and either would work in any other career if it gives them the financial and qualitative freedom to do what they want.

In Scandinavia, the motivations can be in broad strokes the same, but because very few are very rich and very few are very poor, the incentive in money in dampened. What drives people to follow a mission statement is more often the mission itself. If an engineer or designer can make the same amount of money as an artist, people will choose to take what would be a hobby in the US and turn it into a career. People want to see their own visions fulfilled more than earning a little bit more money, since the difference in prosperity is often too small to make a difference to one's motivation. This pronunciation of the mission statement's significance doesn't change the bottom line, but how you sell something should take this difference into consideration and focus on what you want to create and how you want to do it. If you understand the motivation of your audience, you can save yourself time on pitches that will fall on deaf ears.

- Servus