mission and Strategy

So today we will be looking at mission and strategy in an organization. When we talk about mission and strategy, it is important for you to be able to look at these different constructs in an organization because this will give you what this organization is all about. Now you must be wondering what is this to do with operations? One of the things that every organization has to do is to make sure that their operations are in line with mission and strategy. And that's why I'm showing you this construct in this particular module. What we will be looking at is first the definitions of these two constructs. So essentially when we talk about mission, it is a goal, it is what the organization is seeking to achieve. When we talk about strategy, we talk about how an organization seeks to achieve that goal. So essentially, mission is a more overarching thing which is set up in, in an organization to be able to help us define why this organization was made okay. And strategy is okay, fine, at this point of time, this is our mission. Not at this point of time, rather this is our mission. And this point of time, this is how we are working to get to our mission. So when we kind of just kind of getting deeper into this, it's kind of gives us the purpose of being. So the mission is nothing but why the organization is there and what is the purpose of the organization. It kind of implicitly answers the questions of what, what it is going to contribute to the society and also gives us the boundaries and focus. So you know, an organization cannot do anything and everything. It kind of gives us an idea of what this organization is seeking to achieve within the bounds. So it kind of defines the boundary and the focus. Now I want to show you one mission and I want you to deeply analyze it. And this is going to be small activity that I'll be giving you. Also as a classwork activity which would be in canvas, is essentially defining a mission and of a company like Merck. Okay, so I'm going to be showing you two missions and then we'll kind of compare and contrast and that's what is the work in hand today. First of all, when we look at a company like Merck and if you've not heard of this company, I would encourage you to Google it. This is a pharmaceutical medical in the pharmaceutical sciences company, pretty well established, multi billion dollar company, has been there for ages now. And what this company seeks to do is to, you know from its mission statement, if you read the mission statement of Merck, it is to provide society with products and services, innovation solutions that improve the quality of life and satisfy customer needs to provide employees with meaningful work and advancement opportunities and investors with a superior rate of return. Now, when you look at a mission statement like this, by the time you go all the way up to the end, you'll be like, okay, this is really descriptive. Okay, now I'm just going to hold off discussion until I show you the next one. The next one that I'm going to be showing you is a company which I'm sure all of you must have heard of, and this company is Google. Okay? Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Now, when you look at the mission statements of these two entities, Merck, which is pretty wordy, has everything into consideration and Google, which is pretty light and kind of just gives you an idea of what this company is seeking to achieve. What I want you to do today is to compare and contrast as to why you think Think Merck has such a descriptive mission statement as compared to the mission statement of Google. Again, I'm just going to remind you the mission statement is nothing but an overarching goal of the organization. This is the goal of Google. This is the goal of Mission of Merck rather. So what I would like you to do is to write maybe two distinct points as to why you think Think Merck has such a heavy mission statement as compared to what you see for Google having a pretty short and I don't know whether it's fuzzy, whether it's unclear. Everybody has their own way of looking at it and I don't want to bias your thinking process. Merck is too prescriptive as to what it's trying to do. Google is not. Why do you think that's the case? It.