Have you seen an organization without a vision and mission statements? Yes, there are and still very much successful. However, these are organizations that draw only its motivation from a dream and ambition of a person. Still, it is a vision, but it will be short-lived as it dies with that visionary leader. He/she will eventually leave the business without written business concepts, vision and mission as guiding principles of the next generation.
These kinds of organizations are typical to small Filipino businesses. Business concepts and principles are sources of business plans to shape the business goals and objectives. In this economic generation where office work in the service industry is diminishing brought by the computer age, business is the alternative economic option for job seekers. Parents should also help the schools in changing the orientation of graduates whose mind-set is to become a mere employee rather than a mind-set of a business owner.
Further, vision and mission statements are the foundation where businesses create plans in the eventual transfer of the business to the next generation. A business succession plan or development plan for cooperatives, will create business stability and staying competitive in the industry. It is where decisions, conduct of staff, and good practices are founded.
There are many productive Filipino cottage home industries that died with the passing of their visionary business leaders. There is that tendency of Filipino business leaders of leaving the business with too with hard infrastructure – working capital and other implements but without the soft infrastructure – the business vision, mission and core values. This is the weakest link of typical Filipino businesses in the life cycle of a business.
Unlike Chinese business leaders, their vision and mission is teaching their children, in their younger age, the core value of savings and frugality as baptism in their perpetual family businesses. Further, even if their children have earned the highest college degree, they are prodded by their business leaders to stay in the family business. They put up their businesses for service with smaller mark-up and faster merchandise turnover and continue improving their products and service. Thanks to these businesses that continuously improve to create and generate jobs.
While Filipino business leaders’ motive of putting up business is to strike on the onset and never mind the next set. Their mind set is: “there is no use doing business if at the start it does not realize income.” Hence, stating the business vision and mission statements do not matter; yet it is important for Filipino businesses to nurture as brand and corporate culture by the “business-descendants” in the family business.
For instance, when the Cooperative Bank of Mountain Province was found out to have been in operation without vision and mission statements, it had no guiding principles to shape the organizational culture, the officers’ and staffs’ conduct, and the CBMP’s direction. This is one of the findings of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas which issued a prompt corrective action (PCA). Ironically, the CBMP still managed to operate as points of credit even having a vacuum or directionless organization in the banking industry. However, previous officers had no foundation of a shared value and core value to guide them in their conduct, in their decision-dynamics, and in their mind-set in governing the organization’s daily operation.
Hence, officers and staff of CBMP finally came up with its Vision, Mission, Goals, and Objective (VMGO) after a planning workshop on February 2-4, 2018. The Cooperative Development Authority Cordillera Extension Office conducted the strategic planning among sixteen CBMP staff in Pagudpod, Ilocos Norte for this purpose. Gen. Jovito P. Gamad (Ret.) from ACDI MPC also joined the strategic planning.
If there were previous planning activities since the inception of CBMP in 1994, final output of its VMGO was never crafted, drafted, and written. Surprisingly, the CBMP operated without the VMGO that could have set the direction of the CBMP and shaped the organizational culture. In the observation of staffs, Mr. Andres Dadpaas, the longest staying staff, said, “CBMP had been in operation without a well-defined VMGO as its blueprint or source of policy direction for management. Now that they already have a VMGO, CBMP officers and staff can develop a shared value. Even when officers come and go, its VMGO will remain to provide meaning and direction.”
A cooperative that has no as foundation of its plan of action is a futile exercise and action without the plan is dangerous endeavour; but a visionary plan plus action spells the difference. In drawing people to member and patronize the cooperative service, vision and mission statements cooperative organizations are the controlling and motivating factors. It is also a basic rule that part and parcel of a development plan is the vision and mission statements that is presented and approved annually by the member-owners in a Regular General Assembly.
