Crucial within the Tourism, Leisure & Hospitality sector is a focus on the 3 C’s regarding consumers. First you need to establish some form of contact with your potential consumers. Secondly you need to capture their attention. And finally you need the consumer to commit to your product, service and/or brand[i]. To be able to go through the three phases successfully your business or brand needs to be unique and stand out from the crowd. This is the reason why it is relevant to take a step back from daily activities and to invest time in thinking through what exactly are the key drivers of your company or brand and what are the underlying core values?
This can be done via a creative workshop called DNA Dive. This is a co-creative workshop preferably with members from the different departments within the company. In this session the framework of Collins & Porras (1996) on how to build a company’s vision in combination with the adaptation by Van der Loo e.a. (Kus de visie wakker, 2015) is leading.
In several phases, with the help of creative techniques, the following 4 questions are articulated and answered:
Core Purpose: What is the purpose of the organization?What is it’s reason for being?
Challenging Goal:Where is the organization going to? What is it’s envisioned future?
Key Qualities: What are the key qualities of the organization? What is it the organization is good at?
Core Values: What are the core values of the organization. What does it stand for?
Once you’ve defined and documented the answers to these questions, this document will be the guiding principle for future decision making processes. It is essential for the credibility of the company to ‘walk the talk’. A true vision document needs to be a living document that directs all actions from managing director to front-office staff, not one that goes to dust on an empty shelf.
[i] Compare to Dutch: (1) bereiken, (2) boeien en (3) binden van consumenten