Want to learn more about performance-based budgeting? April 16, 2009 Attend Leita’s upcoming seminar at the Texas Municipal League: www.tml.org/ed_budget.html

Tough on Those Vision Statements

April 2009

I received some feedback from my last newsletter saying that vision statements are very important and that I shouldn’t diss them so heavily. OK, OK! I concede that a well-thought-out vision statement can move a group toward greatness.

Sometimes vision statements are called "brand statements." And I heard a great one for the City of Austin...a town I feel blessed to live in. The founder of GSD&M (an Austin advertising agency) said that Austin’s brand centers around creativity. Austin and creativity are synonymous. I can see that -- and feel that -- and like that.

But not all brands or visions are so well thought out or heartfelt. Nassim Taleb, in his book Fooled by Randomness, warns against business leaders who weave together vague business vocabulary in their speeches and strategic plans. He argues that you can tell the difference between a thinker and a babbler (whom he also calls "psuedo-thinkers") by using a Monte Carlo generator to scramble their phrases and words. If the result of the scramble looks suspiciously like the original, you are reading (and working with) dressed-up nonsense.

He says that if you can replicate your boss’s last speech by randomly selecting five of the phrases below, you should look for another job immediately:

We look after our customer’s interests/the road ahead/our assets are our people/creation of shareholder value/our vision/our expertise lies in/we provide interactive solutions/we position ourselves in this market/how to serve our customers better/short-term pain for long-term gain/we will be rewarded in the long run/we play from our strengths and improve our weaknesses/courage and determination will prevail/we are committed to innovation and technology/a happy employee is a productive employee/commitment to excellence/strategic plan/our work ethics.

Does your vision or mission statement use any of that phrasing? Most of them do.

For this reason, I am not crazy about spending an awful lot of time on them.

Next month –- a quick way to generate a vision statement.

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Leita Hart-Fanta, CPA, CGFM
Resides in Austin, Texas and can be reached at www.happycashflow.com