Investment Promotion Strategy: Setting the Vision, Mission and High Level Objectives.
Investment promotion is a long-term game. And like any long journey, there is always a risk of losing people’s enthusiasm and commitment to getting to the destination. To arrive at the desired place, people must understand and connect — at emotional level — with the aspirations of the game.
To inspire team members and other critical stakeholders, and get them to expend the energy and commitments necessary for results, a clear and inspiring picture of the future must be painted. It is critically important that team members come to the office everyday having a clear picture of why their work matters.
To create this all-important effort-inducing atmosphere, the Investment Promotion Agency (IPA) must craft an inspiring vision, a clear mission and a SMART objective for its activities.
This article explains how to come up with each of these, such that the vision and mission are not just wish-list or mere platitudes hanging in the lobby, but ideals that team members own and have personal commitment to.
Vision Statement
Vision is the future the IPA hopes to get to. An IPA’s vision statement describes where the state will be, in the future, as a result of the work of the agency. Vision essentially answers the question of ‘why the IPA exists’?
Of course, most IPAs exist to bring into reality, the economic development goals of the state. As such the vision should be crafted to reflect how the state would be when the IPA succeeds in achieving its aspirations.
Since the vision of the agency is essentially a derivative of the state’s economic development goals, it makes sense that before establishing an IPA, the state must have developed a comprehensive Economic Development Plan (EDP) with clearly stated development goals, milestones and guiding philosophies.
As a guide, IPA’s vision statement should be:
i. inspiring,
ii. ambitious,
iii. concise and
iv. easy to remember.
For a state like Kogi, the vision of its IPA may read like:
To be a highly effective and dependable vessel for attracting private capital to develop and maximize the natural endowments of the state.
The process of visioning by the IPA must be driven mainly by the management team. Of course inputs and comments need to be sought from the governor, the board and senior employees. But ultimately, it is the exclusive responsibility of the management team to determine where the vehicle (the organization and its resources) should be driven to.
Given the idea that an IPA’s vision is directly derived from the state’s EDP, it should ideally be easy to craft. In reality, it is not that easy. It requires exposure, knowledge of what other IPAs are pursuing as well as intellectual energy on the part of the management.
Mission Statement
While vision answers the question of why the IPA exists and where it is headed, mission statement addresses how the agency will get to its desired destination.
A mission statement shows how the vision will be achieved. It often includes an indication of the main action and the kind of values and behaviors required to achieve the vision. Above all, a mission statement must be action-oriented.
For a state like Kogi, the mission of its IPA may read like:
To professionally and innovatively position Kogi State as the most profitable and preferred place to invest and do business in Africa.
Just like vision, a mission statement must be concise, specific and easy to remember.
A key distinction between vision and mission is that while vision is ‘being’, mission is ‘doing’. In this sense, unlike the visioning process being the exclusive brief of the management team, developing a mission statement requires the active involvement of the rank and file of the IPA. Everyone must engage and offer their ideas on the kind of behaviors required to make the vision a reality.
This process of involvement is necessary for people to own the values and behaviors needed. People’s ownership is a must if they are expected to passionately exhibit the agreed behaviors on a consistent basis.
High Level Objectives
An IPA’s vision is the grand picture of how the state will be in the future if the agency does its job well; its mission shows the kind of behaviors required of all its key stakeholders to achieve this future. However, none of these will automatically lead to the needed results until everyone working in the organization knows, and are assigned to, specific daily activities that culminate into the achievement of the vision. Thus, vision statement must be reduced to specific short-term activities and actions points that team members must deliver on for the overall vision to be achieved.
Objectives are the key milestones that add up to make the realizations of the vision possible. To be achievable, objectives must be SMART: specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and time-bound. For example, for Kogi state to achieve the above stated vision and mission, the following objectives need to be crafted.
i. Increase public awareness of every investment opportunities in the state
ii. Boost the image of the state as a profitable, pro-business and investor-friendly location
iii. Increase the number of leads, pool of potentials investors to target.
iv. Develop and publish compendium of incentives targeted at wooing investors into the state
v. Increase the level of engagements between the state and the global investment community
vi. Enhance investors’ access to comprehensive up-to-date information about the state and its investment opportunities
vii. Increase the number and size of investments (FDI and Local) coming into the state
viii. Improve the satisfaction of existing investors to retain their confidence and boost reinvestment
ix. Increase amount of new investments referred and facilitated by existing investors
x. Increase the amount of value-added investments by existing investors
xi. Deepen collaboration with internal and external stakeholders and MDAs for the effective management the business environment
xii. Drive new reforms to keep business environment in the state easy, transparent and efficient.
xiii. Improve the capacity of the agency and its stakeholders to effectively identify, facilitate, attract and manage investment projects
Conclusion
Once the vision, mission and high level objectives have been developed, the next important task is to communicate them. Communication can take the form of newsletter, blogposts, banners on website and in strategic places around the office, bio of social media handles and so on.
However, the most important way to communicate IPA’s vision and supportive behaviors is through leadership by example. The governor, board members and the management team must breath and exemplify the vision and mission.
They must not only constantly talk about the vision at all times and be the agency’s ambassador everywhere they go, they must be the first to live the behaviors required to realize the vision.
For instance, the above Kogi state IPA’s mission statement stresses professionalism and innovativeness. Therefore, the top leadership of the agency, including the governor, must always be and be seen to be professional and innovative in everything they do. The culture has to be established and maintained.
If all the ideas suggested above are taken into consideration and executed effectively, investment promotion agencies across the country will deliver on their mandates.
