V2MOM: focus the company on what matters

The V2MOM (Vision, Values, Method, Obstacles and Measurement) is a great tool to focus you and your team on what you really need to do and how you need to do it. V2MOM helps you to forward all forces of your company / team in a single direction. Especially it helps in startup environment.

V2MOM is a method invented by Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce, to achieve a «high level of organizational alignment and communication while growing at breakneck speed». Let's get acquainted with how it works.

Well-known, that early-stage CEOs need to be good at lots of things. It's hard to overestimate how important are creation a vision for the company and translating it for the rest of the team. As DaVinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Due to V2MOM everyone can understand where company moves, what is a global vision and how act on. And most likely you will get rid of questions like "Why we hire this guy? How we can measure his contribution to the development of the company?" V2MOM answers instead of you.

So, let's look how the V2MOM process works:

1.  The founders / CEO create a draft of the organization’s V2MOM, summarizing the following:

• Vision: The big picture idea for the next 12 months, which helps clarify what you want to do.

• Values: The main 3-5 values for the company. These act as the principles and beliefs that are most important about the vision.

• Methods: The specific tactics to achieve desired goals, which are the majors steps required to achieve the vision.

• Obstacles: Things that are working against you, which encourages people to openly talk about things that are working against your success.

• Metrics: KPI, which specifies the actual numerical result(s) that are sought. These are measurable.

2.  Once the V2MOM is complete for the organization, it is broken down by department leaders and articulated for each group in their own V2MOM. The department’s version supports the organization’s V2MOM.

3.  Each individual creates their personal V2MOM which supports their department’s; the personal V2MOM is also used for performance evaluations.

In his book Behind the Cloud, Mark Benioff’s tells the story of how he’s used V2MOM since Salesforce.com’s inception to focus the company on what matters. In short, as Marc Benioff puts it:

The vision helped us define what we wanted to do. The values established what was most important about that vision; it set the principles and beliefs that guided it (in priority). The methods illustrated how we would get the job done by outlining the actions and the steps that everyone needed to take. The obstacles identified the challenges, problems, and issues we would have to overcome to achieve our vision. Finally, the measures specified the actual result we aimed to achieve.

Important Points for V2MOM creation

1. Everyone in the company needs a V2MOM.
2. Creating a V2MOM takes time.
3. V2MOM should fit on a single piece of paper.

Example of V2MOM

Before you start to write your own V2MOM I offer you to look at Salesforce first V2MOM.

The company, where I am working now, is currently involved in updating our V2MOMs for 2016. In another post I’ll comment on lessons learned from this process.

Question: Have you heard about V2MOM before? Have you tried creating one for yourself or your company?