"Against the Mission & Vision"

Well the correct title must be 'Against the Mission & Vision Statements". Actually at IIPM we had a subject called 'Business Policy'. Business Policy starts with the chapter - Mission & vision statement.

At IIPM they do not teach you the things in straight bookish way. (I agree many other institutes promote innovative learning techniques, but as I have been to IIPM only, I will talk about it only..) Most of the subjects are taught in an open atmosphere where you are allowed to develop your own point of view..

Our Professor while teaching Mission and vision, initiated a debate, whether these statements are really important in an organization or not?

Do organizations really follows these statements, or they frame one after they have achieved their monetary goals..?

The assignment given to us was a group task, we all were to take part in a debate over the importance of 'Mission & vision statements'. Another twist was - it will be decided by lottery system that which group will speak 'for' the topic & which will speak 'against' it. This lottery system to decide for/ against in a debate is a common practice at IIPM. I always hated it, but after joining corporate world i understood the importance of it.

In corporate world many a times you promote some thing which you do not like or believe in and vie versa. Those debates at IIPM has enabled us to look beyond our own liking and preferences. As being an assignment, those debate caries good % of marks and to prove your stand better (which you have not chosen but have got by luck) you really need to do a 360 degree analysis of the topic. At times we discovered really amazing yet unknown facts & views about the topics which seems to have a unanimous general opinion.

Personally i used to believe in the concept of 'Mission & Vision Statements' but as we got to work the other way round finally, i found my self in total distress.

We formed a team of three, we had a slot of 12 minutes to give (do) what ever we could speak, act, show, describe or even mock to convince the audience including our professor that there is no better (or worse) crap that having a mission & vision statement in an organization.

It was our 2nd & final year and we have learnt it quite well that our presentation must have a 'deadly' balance of content & spices. When i say deadly balance it means 60% masalaa and 40% content. But the challenge was 40% content requires 70% of the time available ( that's the most boring part of good content-always), so We had to create a masalaa which can be delivered in say 3 minutes but leaves a lasting impression (about 60% of the total impact of your presentation).

Following was the actual classification of composition:

1. Speaker A- Total Masalaa (Which was me)

2. Speaker B- Content+Masalaa - Examples of organizations who has bright mission statements but fail to follow even a bit of it. ( My god... that girl has raped (of course verbally.. you nuts) DTC (Delhi transport corporation) and Delhi Police, who says ..'pachass varshon se aapki sewa me' and 'with you for you, always' respectively)

3. Speaker C- was a content speaker totally speaking things which are available in books or on internet against mission statement.

So I had to deliver a masalaa speech of 3 mins which should be capable of blowing the audience. I loved (still love) to start a speech or a presentation which a couplet (sher -o-shayri-kavita etc.) I was skeptical whether it will be accepted or not, also i wanted to develop an Orator out of me who can give a good speech without using couplets & poetry. ( it was a useless challenge i had taken, but it had enabled me to use other stage techniques like pictures, tricks, games etc., but I still prefer my collection of couplets over to all those techniques, as I know that I can create a better impact out of it)

Anyways, I was in search of a deadly starting. i thought of many possible ones but was leading to some obvious kind of options which i really didn't want to take up. After so much of speculations I decided upon one, which was really an off beat attempt for me, at least I have never tried in that style till date, but I gave it a try and it served the purpose really well.

So here is the script of the drama I did.. I do not have a practice of writing speeches, i never do. It was the first and perhaps the last time when i did so, unfortunately i lost the real script but most of it is written on my mind, pasting it here directly from the cerebral records...

It was Monday morning , 30th of August 2004, Also co-incidental with Raksha Bandhan that year. We had our classes and it was the 2nd lecture, around 10.30 when we were supposed to come up with our presentation.

The first presentation was from the team speaking for the motion. Guys came, spoke, shouted and gone. (in today's world it is really boring to talk obvious things to people) Audience was expecting some out of the box masalaa.. (Who so ever has invented this phrase 'out of box' must have born before Galileo, as he used to believe that this world is like a box and not like a ball, but just imagine how would it sound if some one says..'out of ball idea..' just joking guys.. some loose talks.. lets go back to the topic)

I have no slides to show but our content speaker had, so first we set the LCD. Then I stood in the middle of the width of the room ( i hardly used podium, which was always there in an IIPM classroom), Looking at me people were not expecting masalaa as i was better known as content speaker.

I was standing with my hands and legs joined, both my elbows touching my body giving a slight hind of a feminine pose, I gave a smile to all of them, tuned my head to each one and peeped into their eyes. and said..

Good Evening...

(Shocking.. 'good evening' at 10.30 AM, some of the nerds looked at their watch and grinned giving an expression that says ' its equivalent of mass killing when you say good morning after 12, and good evening before 5 PM)

I repeated..

'Good Evening and thank you for this opportunity' ( My tone and style was mocking that of a lady, i continued..).

"If I shall go on to become Miss world today, I shall take over from Lisa onto my duties, with as much sincerity and dedication, to go on to become an ambassador of
peace, (pause)
goodwill, (pause)
harmony (pause)
and compassion, and trying to do full justice to our motto, 'Beauty with a purpose.' (pause)
Remember, people, I'll always be there for you,
thank you!"

(then i opened my hand mocked the action of wiping a tear from my left eye, moved from that position and stood few steps away and clapped 3 times and said...)

Good Morning Friends, this is Vishal Thakur, and that was (Pointing towards my previous position) queen of our hearts Aishvarya Rai
at Sun city, South Africa in 1994,
in the miss word contest,
in an answer to the question "what is your mission if you go on to become Miss World Today..?"

(the Pause this time went around 30 -45 seconds as audience were clapping...I wanted to say few words that how Aish had a so called mission and did nothing quotable towards it till then... but the audience's response has confirmed i need not elaborate it... I started again..)

This was an example of how people play with words or rather what could be the difference between words and the work.

Mission statements are often like statutory warning written on a packet of cigarettes "Cigarette smoking is injurious to health", everybody reads it but no body follows it..
I have said some more similar sentences further which i am not able to recall right now...
But the purpose was served and i had discovered a new Masalaa speaker with in me...

By for now..
Will share one more speech from IIPM...

Luv
VT