Beki Zajac | PMP, PMI-ACP, PMO-CP

If an activity doesn’t lead you towards your vision for the future, it’s not worth your time.

Visions are hard. We all know we should have one for our organizations and our teams, but it can feel overwhelming to come up with something compelling. It might be tempting to skip this task all together, but without a strong vision, our people drift and we don’t meet our goals. Heck, we’re not even sure what our goals actually are.

Your organization’s project management practice is no exception. Without a clear view of what the future looks like, you won’t know if you’re heading in the right direction or making progress, and you may not be able to justify all those hours you’re spending developing procedures and tools.

That’s great, but what is a vision statement? Well, I think this article from Forbes sums it up best as something that answers the question: “What does the world look like if we succeed?”.

In simple terms, your vision describes your why. It tells your team the ultimate purpose behind all the different activities people may be completing day after day. It also helps you decide not to do things. If an activity doesn’t lead you towards your vision for the future, it’s not worth your time.

Here are some vision statements from big firms:

• “We empower the world” – Microsoft
• “To create a better everyday life for the many people.” – Ikea
• “We are here to entertain the world, one fan at a time.” – Netflix

What do all these vision statements have in common? They’re all short, easy to remember, and aspirational. Your vision for your project management office (PMO) should be the same, although scaled down to match your level in the organization. At the end of the day, all your team members should be able to quote the vision.

Of course, a vision statement alone is not enough to kick off your maturity journey. You’ll also need a mission statement, goals, and measures.

Once you have your vision, you can build your mission statement to describe in more detail the scope of what you do and how you do it. This should align with the why you’ve defined in your vision statement. For example, Ikea expands on their vision through their mission statement of “to offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.”

So, what might this look like for a PMO?

Vision: We drive project success.
Mission: To provide structure, governance, and training across the organization to enable all teams to deliver successful projects.

Maybe this still all just sounds like some business school nonsense to you and you don’t see the value, but I promise you it’s worth the time. Once you have these developed, you can meet with key stakeholders and ask them if your vision and mission align with what they expect from the PMO. You can discuss it with project managers in the organization and ask them how far you are from that reality and what you would need to deliver in order to realize it.

I’ll dig into this deeper in the next post, but this also helps you to identify measurable goals. Your organization might use key performance indicators (KPIs) or objectives and key results (OKRs), but it’s the same idea: you need to figure out specific, measurable things that can indicate progress towards your ultimate vision for the future. If you haven’t defined your vision and mission, you risk being disorganized when determining what you’ll measure and potentially driving towards conflicting things.

When you’re setting up a PMO or starting to work on maturing your practice, it can be tempting to try to make immediate progress, but take a moment to look at the big picture by developing your vision and mission statements first. You’ll be glad you did!