In this essay shortcomings and effective elements of WarnerMedia News would be reviewed and discussed. The mission of WarnerMedia (2020) is to “deliver the world’s best stories and most engaging content from talented storytellers and journalists to audiences around the globe.” (line 6) It is effective as it clearly depicts the company’s intent to provide engaging content. The company values its brand and services offered and knows its distinguishing point lies within the company’s content creators. The mission statement also demonstrates the company’s goal to maintain an international market share. It is also fairly long but stays within the acceptable, effective range. However, the simplicity of the mission statement is both an attractive point and a shortcoming as it does not distinguish the company from its competitors. The mission statement does not express the philosophy of operation of the organization definitively.
The vision statement is an essential component that helps to unite the employees and guides managers towards the desirable development of the company. In the book Crafting & Executing Strategy by Thompson et al. (2016), several components of an essential vision statement are listed. The authors mention the need to be graphic, directional, focused, inspiring, and memorable. WarnerMedia attempts to stay within the inspirational margins and sounds memorable, but other aspects are poorly executed.
The vision of WarnerMedia is expressed as the bridge between premium content and connectivity to that content. The company wishes to deliver more “choice, value and innovation to consumers” and the best experience globally, aligning with the mission statement (WarnerMedia, 2020, line 4). The vision is fairly graphic but remains on the line of vagueness and incompleteness as no specifics are included. The vision also mentions the company’s current position that it is bringing a new approach to media and entertainment, which remains a broad interpretation of reality. This can also be addressed as a shortcoming of the vision. However, it is beneficial that the company clearly focuses on the pursuit of its current ambitions. The focus provides managers with guidance on resource allocation and essential decision-making processes.
The inspirational aspect of the company’s vision stems from the desire to become a connectivity bridge and supply consumers with a wide range of accessible content. However, it is also utilizing superlatives specifically while mentioning the delivery of “the best entertainment experiences in the world” (WarnerMedia, 2020, line 5). As a result, similarly to the specifics of the mission, the vision lacks definitive mentioning of the approaches that would allow the company to achieve such an outcome. On account of a feasible journey which in the book (Thompson et al., 2016) is described as a direction within the achievable margins, the company fails to provide details to demonstrate measurable progress. The content range, in a way, could be described as an indicator of current and future company growth. However, it is also a generic description of what can be achieved by rival companies.
In conclusion, WarnerMedia company has done a fairly decent job at constructing its mission statement. On the other hand, the approach taken to create the vision statement was not as effective due to the oversimplified, broad, and uninformative description. The mission statement was successful due to the clearness and intent but had a similar problem with oversimplification. The vision statement lacked the aspects of feasibility, failed to indicate the benefits of its direction, and dwelled on the current state of affairs. Nevertheless, it made a good impression in providing graphic, inspirational, focused, and memorable direction for development.
References
Thompson, A. A., Gamble, J., & Peteraf, M. (2016). Crafting and executing strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage: Concepts and cases (20th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
WarnerMedia News. (2020). Web.