Vision, Mission & Values

In May 1966, Capitol Records released one of the most disappointing albums in living memory to enter a record store.

It cost a then eye-watering $70,000 to produce (the equivalent to around $600,000 in today’s terms), ran to a short but sweet 35 minutes and 37 seconds, peaked at number 10 on the US Billboard chart (lower than its predecessors) and then slowly slipped out of sight and mind.

The album was Pet Sounds and business has much to learn about vision, mission, values and belief from its story.

Fast forward 53 years and Pet Sounds is routinely regarded, musically at least, as the greatest record of all time. For four decades it has occupied one of the top two spots in Rolling Stone magazine’s all-time top 100, turned The Beach Boys into cultural icons and established Brian Wilson as a creative mastermind.

In my last article I talked about how the journey of any business should start at the end, since it’s impossible to be sure of getting to where you want to be if you have no idea where you’re going.

It would be easy at this point to talk about cars and maps and directions and avoiding roadworks; but actually, the parallels with Pet Sounds are far more interesting (and hopefully a bit more original).

Before we go on, let’s just be clear on the definitions of vision, mission and values. I think they’re very clear cut.

A strategic vision communicates a company’s future business scope – where it’s going. The mission typically describes its present business and purpose – who we are, what we do, and why we’re here. Values are the qualities and traits that define how we do it.

So, where does Pet Sounds fit in?

Vision

Pet Sounds was The Beach Boys’ 11th album. Over the previous ten they had progressively established themselves as part of the California surf sound with distinctive vocal harmonies and a particular look.

We can equate writer and producer Brian Wilson with the CEO or managing director role in a business. As he looked into the future, he saw a need to reposition the band in a new niche, without compromising the popularity they had gained over the preceding four years.

He understood that the band needed a unique value proposition. His vision was to change the way his music was written and recorded in order to give the fans a more immersive experience. His approach – which came to be known as the wall of sound – was to record layer upon layer upon layer of recordings to create something richer than had ever been heard before.

The 35 minutes of music that made it onto the album was designed specifically because it would showcase a new approach to recording. The songs on Pet Sounds still had that Beach Boys stamp, but they this was no longer the bubblegum music the world had come to expect from them.

In business terms, what Wilson had done was look back at past performance, considered the competitive environment to find a niche and worked out the way to take the band there.

Mission

As far as the Beach Boys’ mission was concerned, Pet Sounds was a huge gamble. Brian Wilson was taking a known product that was familiar and loved and then changing it.

However, he was savvy enough to know that in order to safeguard the band’s artistic and financial health, he needed to maintain the core elements of what made the band popular in the here and now.

In many ways the mission couldn’t change: if The Beach Boys were a business (which, by one definition they were, since they generated income and profit), then in 1966 mission of that business might have been to be a bunch of musically talented guys who write songs that bring a smile to your face, make you want to dance and become the soundtrack to your life.

With Pet Sounds, that didn’t change. In fact, and because of the wall of sound approach, if anything the mission was enhanced. God Only Knows and Sloop John B would go on to be an iconic definition of mid-60s America.

As a business, The Beach Boys changed direction – but they never changed the core offer they made to their ‘customers’. That was as solid and reliable as it had ever been.

Values

One f the reasons Pet Sounds is considered to be an artistic masterpiece five decades after its release is in part because of the values that were present the and which can still be heard in its music.

Such was Brian Wilson’s commitment to the vision and mission that, as the band’s de facto leader, he had set out for The Beach Boys that the values he insisted upon in the studio became the driver for the success of the Beach Boys brand and product.

It was awash with musical integrity, an unimpeachable work ethic (one that almost drove the band apart) and a relentless pursuit of excellence.

Values ultimately define a company, its brand and its product or service. If you accept that you are what you do, then as long as you do what’s right, it’s impossible to go far wrong.

In the context of The Beach Boys, even though the fans took a while to grow to like the new ‘sound’, there was always a belief that the fans were at the heart of the creative choices Wilson had made.

And what of belief?

Well, when the brand new product on your journey to your destination underperforms the other products in your range, it’s easy to lose faith in the vision.

Pet Sounds was commercially disappointing in the context of previous albums and no one would have blamed Brian Wilson if he’d done a sharp U-turn and gone back to the candy stripe tunes that had made a bunch of money before.

Instead, he went back into the studio and spent the same amount of money he’d spent making Pet Sounds recording a single song – Good Vibrations. More than half a century on, that song is considered one of the three most culturally important songs of modern music. 

Paul McCartney spent more than 25 years in the UK commercial radio industry, dealing with hundreds of clients who used radio as part of their marketing mix. He has launched, run and turned businesses around by having a clear vision and setting clear objectives. He has experience in managing and motivating teams of all sizes and has a good track record of maximising the performance of the people working with him. Paul also has an MBA awarded with credit by the University of Leicester.