Why do normal boys need the company's mission - and some cybernetics?

“Mission” is usually sold by companies in an advertising agency along with a still warm brand book. Well, that is, if it really was a brand book, and not a manual on how you can not draw a logo on the fences. The mission is included in the ritual of exchanging the founder’s stock for a bazaar.

Next on the mission, bolt the bolt and work as before. More precisely, PR people sometimes remember about it and tell about charity after press releases. I saw only a few honest missions; in one large company, the third point even went “to enrich investors”.
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But, nevertheless, if you use distributed control, this is the most incomprehensible garbage vital for you.

Why is she so beautiful?

In Russia, it’s most likely that it should be, because a large company is not supposed to live without a mission. There are exceptions, of course. In other countries, people more often create a business not for the sake of a pile of attendants, a jeep and a box of vodka, but to change something. In this case, the mission describes the ultimate goal or the main way to achieve it.

Grandfather Kotler once wrote that if you combine phrases in any order about the importance of people, become the best in your field and organize peace in the whole world, you will get quite a suitable mission for the corporation. For any.

So, in the classical theory, the mission is a description of the meaning of the company's existence and a means of motivating staff. The question is how many graduates in marketing can translate this into simple Russian and give a simple Russian example.

Dispersive control

Let us postpone for a moment the mission and move on to cybernetics - the science of control.

With small sizes, the hierarchical control network with the root center of decision making copes well. With the growth of the company at the level of a distant site, it is not always possible to take and clarify with the manager why we are digging there at all. If you run with each decision from the point of application to the top (the final decision point), then immediately comes stack overflow, collapse and hell.

Therefore, at some point you need decision-making centers lower levels. In parallel, direct links are introduced (the closest analogy is the work of a reflex arc instead of a conscious reaction through the brain), but this is somewhat beyond the scope of the topic.

So, in your structure there are people who have to make decisions based on their own asshole feeling. In general, if they are “theirs in the board,” everyone understands everything. But this, of course, is not always the case.

So, you need a means so that a person can check whether his decision (taken independently without advice a level higher) is correct. Need a tool. This is mission plus values.

Good missions

Good missions are easily verified. Set yourself any task, and see which of the solutions is most appropriate.

For example, if you have a choice:

• Outrun a competitor and release an untested piece of hardware.
• Perhaps lose in profit, and bring the test to the end.

Option may not be very obvious. Moreover, if you are from Cisco, the mission is about the fact that the company creates reliable networks. When fluctuations have something to turn. Check (1) - does not match. Check (2) - complies. Decision is made.

Or imagine that you work in Amazon, and you need to make a decision in 5 minutes whether to put a new strange product on sale. And these are completely incomprehensible gift certificates for CTF quests on information security. I would like to refuse, but in the mission there was something about the space where everyone can buy what they want. Probably worth trying to sell them, right?

Guess who?

And how is it in the harsh reality of us?

We ourselves have not bother with these carved wording, but we know for sure two things:

• Mosigra is: 1) positive, 2) profit
• Magellan (our production) is the best board games in the world.

I must say about Magellan. Considering that the surrounding reality is a rather complicated thing, to declare a mission about the best games in the world and make them into practice are two big differences. And much. But you have to try.

When we release a new edition of the game, as a rule, it is almost always improved: somewhere feedback on reviews helps, somewhere - stories of players in social networks, somewhere - analysis of marriage, sometimes - stories of animators and so on. If kosyachim - this happens - we try to correct. Just the other day (according to the law of meanness - right after the topic of marriage), Magellan passed the game of the “Agents” game with slightly different shirts of mission cards by color. How did the control - a mystery, most likely, the marriage did not concern the whole party. In general, we managed to sell 20 pieces, until we wrote a darthslider with an indication of the problem. Who could - contact. Collected all the circulation from the stores and sent for rework. On the other hand, if in that case a misprint would come to the stores, they would not return the circulation, but would correct it in the following.

Or just recently there were two moments with the localization of the game: on the final box, the wrong kerning in one of the inscriptions (not the title), plus the publisher's slogan in English. It would seem that for us to touch the kerning, if it does not affect sales? And the box should be printed tomorrow, the machine is already idle, the stores are waiting. So no, we took it out of the process, corrected it and prepared it anew. And the slogan was translated, and not just translated, but translated in several versions - and once again into English, so that the authors choose the most correct shade of meaning.

All this, if it adds to the commercial value of the game, is incomparable with the time spent. But this approach - if you can, do it well. I saw this in the art workshops of Samarkand: there the master simply cannot give away a bad or ugly thing - he will be ashamed of it. Because there was a caste system of professions, and when you become a master you give a concrete promise to your ancestors. Contract, if you like. And for us to do so - just a human high.

And the production workers pick equipment and go through the whole engineering quests to improve it. By the way, one of the most important technical problems in 2012 was decided by the engineer of the old Soviet school, who with the help of a soldering iron, pliers and a mother assembled a device worth a couple of million on the western market.

Tips

Values ​​and mission give clues as to what and how to do. For example, an insoluble problem - what should be on outdoor advertising, which layout to choose. What are we doing? That's right, we return to the mission again. If we had her in the formulation as above, then, as you can see, she clearly would not have been sufficiently concrete about what exactly is positive. It seems like not mass executions, but still advertising options are still a few pieces. Values ​​are the detail of the mission (roughly speaking). They also tell you what to focus on.

So, the mission is a tool for checking solutions. If the decision brings us closer to the execution of the mission - it is correct. If it takes away - wrong.

And you can also build a mission by the actions of the company, doing a kind of reverse-engineering. Try it, it's interesting. Often at the moment of understanding this fact comes another terrifying understanding that, in general, most businesses have no other purpose than to earn by any available means as soon as possible.