The primary mission statement that can be used as a positioning statement is best when it meets these criteria:

The fewer the words and the least specific the better

The more symbolic and resonant the better

It speaks to Customer Needs.

Once developed the mission statement can be elaborated to form a clear focus of a company's goal and reason for being. It forms the basis of a decision framework that responds quickly to new situations and guides a company to select what is really important.

At Business Renewal Associates, we analyze and refine an organization's goals, research to understand the aspirations of customers and other players, and we support consensus toward refining a mission and a clear mission statement.

Symbol
Symbols are abstract representations of ideas and words. Symbolic language is the currency of the best advertising...and the best poetry and art.

Many business people have difficulty, at first, understanding the difference between what is concrete and what is symbolic. In life, symbol is usually a behaviour that represents something unspoken: a handshake, a bow, raising a wineglass in toast. In marketing and advertising it's showing a benefit rather than talking about it. Another way to think of symbol is that it's what we do when we drive or walk to a place we know well: we navigate by landmarks (symbols); this compares to the more concrete and analytical way of navigating by reading street signs and scrutinizing addresses.

People mostly think and function through collecting symbols. Thus the symbols as represented by the actions (behaviours) and the graphic representations of a company operate at a most important visceral level.

Business Renewal Associates will analyze the symbols your company exerts on both the marketplace and on your employees and ensure that they best correspond to your mission. We will also help you work with experts in the art of building symbols.

People
People make money for companies. When you consider search costs, lost productivity and training time, the costs to replace an employee easily add up to as much as a year's salary. The cost to replace "information" workers tends to be higher than it is for administration or "staff" positions. When you lose an employee, you also lose a resource of company history, culture and lore. In many instances you also make available a highly trained resource to your competitor. While downsizing may provide a short lived boost to the bottom line, the long term costs are high. Thus, blood bath restructuring should be considered a last resort and be recognized as a failure of management.

The better strategy is to deploy people to increase sales and efficiency. Business Renewal Associates will help you deploy people where they can have a more positive influence on revenue and where their skills are fully utilized. As well we can help you identify people who are ready to do more than they've done in the past, and assist you in selecting the people who will be your next generation of moneymakers.

Business Renewal Associates has a track record of improving companies' performance without downsizing.

Structure
Supervision and communication lines need to be based on the processes your company needs to transform inputs, such as raw material, energy and labour, into value added products.

There are as many theories about how to structure a company as there are popular business writers.

At Business Renewal Associates we start with the understanding that every product has a component of information (design, research, marketing, training), a component of raw materials, one of blue collar labour, and of energy.

We start with a simple formula: how much of the selling price of goods and services fits all the above categories. Many companies are surprised at the high percentage of information, typicaly in the 75% range according to Canadian industry estimates for manufactured goods like home appliances.

From this study and from an analysis of the most effective process protocols, it becomes easier to develop appropriate structures and teams of responsibility and communication channels.

Business Renewal Associates will guide you through this process and help you refine structures to benefit from the skills of your workforce and improve working environments and the intrinsic rewards your employees enjoy in working for you.