So, where is your cooperative headed?
Back in the May article, we discussed the Balanced Scorecard and the need for an organization to be able to measure how well it stacks up to its competitors. This scorecard is a very important tool in determining what to focus on in any organization to make it better. However, before an organization can utilize these business metrics and apply them to identify areas of improvement, there must be a clear and simple understanding of what that organization is there to do and how it will achieve those things. A mission and vision statement that should tie to a strategic business plan typically defines this.
Up until now, Tipmont’s mission and vision statements read like many other electric utilities over the past 10-15 years. Due to limited space here let me just say that most electric organizations create big flowery statements that are quickly forgotten and seldom embraced. For the most part, they all say the organization will provide reliable electric service and good customer (or in our case, member) service. I would argue if you do not do these two things, or that is all you strive to do, perhaps you should not be in this business. This type of statement certainly does not describe why cooperatives are in business and it does not say much about what we, as employees and directors, want to do for our members as a collective. You have heard me say it before, we are not an investor owned utility (next month we will talk about some of the differences in a cooperative) and we are not here to make a profit for shareholders.
With this thought in mind, the staff entered our annual planning session with our board of directors determined to set a new course and establish a new mission and vision. One that spoke of our desire to serve our membership and paint a picture of what every employee working for the membership should be about. We also wanted it to relate back to a business model that would support the ideas expressed in the statement.
Again, I am limited in space here so I will cut to the chase. We collected feedback through various means from our employees and members. We also asked our employees to submit their ideas of what our mission statement should look like to support our membership. The leadership group then took this information and formalized our mission, our vision, and the business model we will use to support it.
In the end, your cooperative’s mission is quite simple, we exist not-to-profit. We exist solely to serve our members. Our mission is, “To do the right thing for our members.”
You may be wondering what that means? If so, good…because our next step was to define the meaning through a vision. The “right thing” for us to do for our membership is to improve the quality of life in our service area through community involvement, education, safety, personal, and economic growth while providing reliable and affordable electric service. You see, being a good corporate neighbor and citizen is more than just providing a basic service. It is also about the things you can do to improve the overall quality of your community. Having said this, it doesn’t mean the answer is always, “yes” to every member’s request. I wish we had the ability to make every member happy all the time. That’s not realistic. However, it does mean we weigh out the overall good for the cooperative members as a collective and make decisions that support the whole.
Now, let me give you a greatly abbreviated version of how this fits into a business model. As an organization, we have strategic initiatives with objectives under each focused on achieving the vision mentioned above. At Tipmont, those initiatives are Organizational Development, System Reliability, Affordable Power, Environmental Stewardship, and Member Engagement. Each initiative has multiple specific objectives that are broken down into tasks to accomplish in each year. We are currently moving toward the second year of a three-year business plan.
To accomplish these tasks we work through a simple model that I can verbalize like this, “To do the right thing for our members we must develop our organization to allow us the knowledge and tools to deliver on our member expectations in the areas of system reliability, affordable power, and environmental stewardship. As we do this, we must engage the membership and provide them with information and educational tools they can use to see the progress we are making on their behalf in each of these areas.”
It all sounds so easy! Obviously, I have provided a greatly simplified explanation of our organization’s strategic plan. If you want to see the model and get additional information, visit our web site at www.tipmont.org. The reality is we face challenges in each of these areas. However, at the root of this plan is a group of people that are dedicated to doing the right thing for the membership. It comes out most in our employees when a crisis occurs like a large power outage or when our communities and/or members call on us for help. Those times remind me why we are here and why we have to stay on this course and overcome the challenges we face….it’s for our members.
Tim McCarthy
Tipmont REMC CEO