What is the Ashridge Mission Model?
Managers and employees are seldom looking for an aim and a sense of identity. They desire more than just safety, pay and an opportunity to build up their abilities They need a "Sense of Mission". Actually there are a various functions that a Mission can possess in any organization. These can be external and internal and comprise:
To motivate and encourage managers and employees for higher levels of performance. (Sense of Mission)
To direct resource allocation in a reliable manner.
To assist to balance the competing and sometimes conflicting interests of diverse organizational stakeholders.
To encourage shared values among employees.
To refocus an organization at the time of crises.
To advance corporate performance.
A Mission Statement is an expression of a company's mission. The Ashridge Mission Model includes the subsequent four elements which must be linked together, resonating and reinforcing each other to produce a strong Mission:
Purpose. Three categories:
Firstly, for the advantage of the shareholders
Secondly, for the benefit of all stakeholders
And lastly, for the advantage of a higher ideal, going beyond just satisfying the requirements of its stakeholders.
Strategy. The commercial sense for the company. Strategy links aims to behavior in a commercial, balanced, left-brain way.
Values. The ideas and moral principles and theories that lie behind a company's culture. A Sense of Mission takes place when employees found their personal values associated with the organizational values. Values provide sense to the norms and behavioral values in the company. Values are high motivators to act in the top interests of the objectives of the company. They can give a rational for behavior that is just as tough as strategy. But in another, moral, emotional, ethical and right-brain way. It is for this cause that the Ashridge structural framework has a diamond shape.
Policies and Behavioral Standards. These are the guidelines to assist people to choose what to do on a regular day-to-day basis.
Usage of the Ashridge Mission Model
It helps to think clearly regarding mission.
It helps to discuss mission with other colleagues.
Both for creating a new Mission and evaluating an existing Mission.
A corporate mission should not be mixed with a corporate vision. A vision is a mental picture of actual or possible and desirable future condition of the organization.
Steps in the Ashridge Mission Model. Process
Various steps involved in developing Ashridge Mission Model includes-
Purpose
Strategy
Values
Behavioral Standards
Character