Who is Responsible for Creating Aspirations?

January 5, 2011

This is a part of a series that was created to help you define what you aspire to be as a company. This series will walk through the process, necessary roles, in addition to guides for each role to define your aspirations quickly.

There are three primary roles in a company aspirations practice

(This series will provide quick start guides to help each of the people involved with the roles initiate the practice over the course of the next several weeks):

  1. The CEO and executive team, who are responsible for 1) defining the mission, vision, values, and priorities, 2) expressing the aspirations, 3) ensuring that all employees understand the aspirations and are aligned, 4) living and reinforcing the aspirations, 5) reviewing the results from the aspirations work and identifying the next set of actions on a quarterly basis, and 5) changing the aspirations when necessary.
  2. The facilitator of the initial workshop, who is responsible for guiding the CEO and executive team during a one-day, off-site meeting to develop the company aspirations and for facilitating the quarterly retrospective meetings.
  3. The administrator, who is responsible for initiating and maintaining the program, monitoring progress, measuring results, and suggesting changes to the CEO and executive team. The administrator could be an executive assistant, someone in marketing, someone in human resources, or anyone else who has an interest and the skills necessary to fulfill the role.

Next week, I’ll post the metrics for reviewing progress.

Founder & Partner

As the founder of OpenView, Scott focuses on distinctive business models and products that uniquely address a meaningful market pain point. This includes a broad interest in application and infrastructure companies, and businesses that are addressing the next generation of technology, including SaaS, cloud computing, mobile platforms, storage, networking, IT tools, and development tools.