"IndyCar shall be the clear number-one choice among auto racing consumers in the United States. At its core is the Indianapolis 500, an iconic American institution that shall transcend the sport of racing and be a worldwide automotive celebration."
Yea or Nay?
This is the time to suggest changes and/or additions. If I do not receive any further suggestions in the next few hours, then I will proceed and use the Vision Statement above.
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." - William James
I anticipate seeking suggestions for our New Day Rising IndyCar Mission Statement very soon. Some contributions to the Vision Statement discussion should be revisited when we attempt to hash out our Mission Statement.
If you would like to prepare, then I suggest that you read this very brief explanation of the difference between a Vision Statement and a Mission Statement. It was published by the Minnesota Department of Health. I appreciated its brevity.
In summary, a Vision Statement is a conception of the optimal state of being. A Mission Statement identifies those Big Picture Activities that must be done consistently in order to realize and sustain the Vision. The Mission should not be highly detailed, but it should be actionable.
And so, we press on "As If" what we do makes a difference. Let us hope that Mr. James was right.
Roggespierre
Reminds me of a Tom Peters quote: "A mission statement is a long awkward sentence that demonstrates management's inability to think clearly."
ReplyDeleteThat said, here's mine:
Vision: Restore the International 500-Mile Sweepstakes to its status as The Greatest Spectacle in Racing, and the National Championship series to its premier status atop American motorsports.
Mission: To find and develop opportunities that benefit series drivers, teams and partners, including fans.
Values: The National Championship series is committed to providing affordable, exciting and personalized family motorsports entertainment.
Our Product: The National Championship Series must always give competitors, partners and spectators a motorsports experience they cannot get anywhere else, ever-presenting “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” regardless of venue or form.
Our Family: We recognize that competitors, partners and spectators comprise a family sharing a mutual interest in fair, exciting motorsports competition and entertainment. We recognize our obligation to provide value to the entire family.
Rocketman53;
ReplyDeleteYour mono-mania regarding the 500 notwithstanding, I beliewe what we are trying to accomplish here is two fold. 1) restore the Indy 500 to it's rightful status as "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing" and 2) set the groundwork for a series that leverages the interest in the 500 into a successful, viable series. If we concentrate soley on the 500 there is a vacuum as far as IndyCar racing is concerned. There would be no guidance as to what rules, what ways to foster competition. We need to do both if IndyCar racing is to survive and flourish.
Roggespierre:
ReplyDeleteI think that we can combine elementws of your vision statement and Rocketman53's viston to read:
"The IndyCar National Championship Series (ImdyCar) shall be......"
Just a thought.
Rocketman 53,
ReplyDeleteYour Vision seems to me to be pretty similar to what we have. In addition, I think that it must contain a quantifiable element. What does "premier" mean? In my opinion, that definition must include metrics that we can use to determine whether or not our plan is working.
I disagree with some possible implications of your Mission. Drivers supply labor to teams, who in turn supply materials to the IRL. Fans are our customers. Without serving them first, we will end up right back where IndyCar finds itself now.
This might sound harsh, but I'll say it anyway. I don't care about creating opportunities that might benefit drivers and teams that do not add value to the IndyCar product.
At present, the IRL has no choice but to serve the current drivers and teams because prospective new entrants are priced out of the market. Solving that problem is fundamental to our efforts here.
We would be fools if we were to not take into account the interests of our suppliers. The priority, however, must be customers.
If we have enough customers, then suppliers can come and go without threatening our business.
I like your ideas regarding Product. Uniqueness is an appealing attribute, particularly when you consider the spec nature of racing in this age.
Your Family idea is intriguing, but I will warn you that the interests of firms and individuals at various levels of the supply chain are not always mutual. That is why we focus primarily on end users (customers). Every one that we add increases the size of the pie that must be divided among participants at every level of the enterprise.
I thank you for your contributions. Please feel free to engage in debate. That is central to my purpose here.
Best Regards,
Roggespierre
GreyMouser,
ReplyDeleteThat's a good idea. Renaming this product will probably be necessary. Providing a linguistic link to the salad days might be the best course.
That said, I suggest that we wait. Let's see what we come up with when we address the 4 Ps of Marketing before we think about naming the product.
Think of "IndyCar" as the working title for the series that races at the Indianapolis 500. Similarly, think of "IRL" as the working title for the corporate entity that sanctions and owns the commercial rights to the series that races at the Indianapolis 500.
Do you think that this is acceptable?
Best Regards,
Roggespierre
Roggespierre:
ReplyDeleteI think the "working" definitions are fine. I do think that it will be necessary to rename the sanctioning body since the IRL has so much negative baggage associated with it.
Meanwhile....
Let us continue :As if:
GM said:
ReplyDelete"If we concentrate soley on the 500 there is a vacuum as far as IndyCar racing is concerned. There would be no guidance as to what rules, what ways to foster competition. We need to do both if IndyCar racing is to survive and flourish."
I am mono-manical about the 500 for a simple reason: It's all there is that earns its keep, and about all there is with an immediate sales and revenue growth potential worth pursuing. Series racing is not the solution - it is the documented problem. There is no demonstrated need, neither contemporary nor historic, for an IndyCar series. This site has amply demonstrated the Potemkin village nature of this entire affair.
The fact is there is nothing to recommend a series as an investment these days.
Roggespierre said:
"Fans are our customers. Without serving them first, we will end up right back where IndyCar finds itself now.
This is the holy grail, isn't it? It's clear that the dogs aren't eating the food. But my point is that this has to be a mutually beneficial enterprise - the fans are happy, the teams profitable, etc. etc. Which goes back to why the apparently failed, parasitic series needs to be scrapped as an IMS-related enterprise. And the 500 needs to re-establish itself with the general public by opening to non-cookie cutter entries racing for the biggest bucks anywhere.
"The fact is there is nothing to recommend a series as an investment these days."
ReplyDeleteYou have a strong argument and a valid point.
The only remaining test of soundness would be a series that is based on a different model. That is what we're trying to achieve here.
That said, if the solutions that evolve here are not clearly more appealing than the alternative you present, then I will be the first to say that Indy should again be a stand-alone event.
Best Regards,
Roggespierre
Rocketman53:
ReplyDeleteIn your vision statemnet above you stated:
"...and the National Championship series..."
Does this not imply that you want a series to go along with the 500? If it does then you are arguing against yourself.
What I am saying is we "leverage" the interest in 500 ti build interest in events past the 500. If we don't then IndyCar racing exists in a vacuum. We MUST leverage that interest, otherwise the 500 becomes a footnote in the yearly motorsports calendar. If we don't, we may continue to hear/see such comments as: "in other motorsports news... the Indianapolis 500 mile race was held today...." instead of it being the lead story.
I envision the 500 and the series as having a synergistic relationship, where one reinforces the other. This is opposed to a symbiotic relationship where one depends on the other. Which is the case now.
If we concentrate solely on the 500, the rest of IndyCar racing exists in a vacuum. As is often stated: "Nature abhors a vacuum" This our chance to control what fills that vacuum and to ensure that it is viable, cost friendly, and competitive and most importantly keeps the fans interest.
Assuming the IRL is here to stay, I think the product needs to be renamed, and I think it needs to use the words Indianapolis 500 in the new title. I’ve thrown a couple of different things around, but they all sound clunky and might even reduce the prestige of the 500. For example, the Indianapolis 500 Racing Series.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure the general public links the IRL and Indy Car Series with the Indianapolis 500, because AOWR has been called so many things over the last 15 years. My study is far from scientific, but when I was trying to recruit people to go to Mid-Ohio this summer far more people had an idea what the LeMans Series race was than what the IRL race was. I’m not sure if those people know what Le Mans is, or if they, like so many other people my age, just know the cars from video games like Gran Turismo and Forza. Once I explained to them what the IRL was they understood how it was linked to the 500, but you don’t have to do that with NASCAR.
I think my vision statement would be something like this. I’ll stick with the Indy Car name for now, but I think we need to hammer home how important the 500 is and completely define what the series is. I don’t like have Indianpolis 500 in there twice. I’ll try to revise it.
“Indy Car shall be the clear number-one choice among auto racing consumers in the United States featuring open wheel race cars designed for competition at the Indianapolis 500 competing at oval, road, and street courses across America. At its core is the Indianapolis 500, an iconic American institution that shall transcend the sport of racing and be a worldwide automotive celebration.”
To those who are advocating running the series with consistent reference to the 500, a question; Why did NASCAR find success without endless self referencing to the Daytona 500? How could that have happened when, for many years, it was their primary event?
ReplyDeleteFor a series to work and grow and prosper, the races must stand on their own.
Muskie,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your contribution. Frankly, your reference to video games likely means that you are younger than the typical contributor here. I am 40 years old; most of my frequent guests are, I suspect, a bit older.
Welcome. I hope that you will return often.
Your Vision Statement is more eloquent than mine. I might incorporate some of your language to improve the flow.
That said, I don't think that we need the level of detail that you use. Remember that a Vision Statement describes the optimal state of being for an organization.
The reference to the types of circuits that shall be used gets into strategy and tactics. For example, we would need to determine that a series that races at street courses can in fact become the clear number-one choice among auto racing consumers in the United States. I will not say that this can not be true. However, I know of no empirical evidence that supports such a claim. We would therefore need to establish a compelling reason that might allow us to believe that street racing would assist our efforts to make IndyCar the number-one choice.
Those discussions are on the horizon. Once we have Vision, Mission and Values firmly established, we can begin to develop the 4Ps - Product, Price, Place, Promotion. In my mind, where to race is a marketing decision that belongs in the Place category. Similarly, the types of cars that we should race belong to the Product category. Such decisions will be based specifically on the Vision that we want to achieve, the Mission that we must execute, and the Values with which we shall go about our business.
Please let me know whether or not you agree.
Best Regards,
Roggespierre
Good thought Roggespierre!
ReplyDeleteWe need more young people--it is their world, and their ideas of what open wheel racing should be is more important in the long run than the thoughts and ideas we "older" (yes, well over 40) people propose.
We "older" interested people can offer a view of history, and refer to what worked in the past, but for a generation that watches "Extreme Games", and what I refer to as "one guy beating the crap out of another', until blood flows everywhere---what does IndyCar racing have to become to attract them?
Their Vision is needed---badly needed!
osca
I've been reading this blog for a while now, and I figured, at 27 I would be the youngest contributor.
ReplyDeleteI have not looked up the attendance figures from the late 80s and early 90s, but I remember huge crowds at Mid-Ohio and Cleveland when I would go as a child. I may be romanticizing things a little bit, but the crowd and the racing that I saw this summer at Mid-Ohio both fell well short of what I remembered. Perhaps road and street racing will not work until a solid following is rebuilt using the 500 and other oval races.
I think using the words “open wheel” have a place in the vision statement. I’m just not sure how to phrase it to make it make sense and fit the objective.
After reading the Minnesota Department of Health link Roggespierre provided, I think the original vision statement is perfectly adequate.
ReplyDeleteVision = "what we expect to see if everything works ideally." (e.g. "Healthy people in a healthy world")
So, in the future, if all goes to plan, we expect to be able to look at IndyCar and see that it is "the clear number-one choice for racing consumers in the United States."
We expect that the Indianapolis 500 will be "at its core"
We expect that the Indianapolis 500 "will transcend the sport...and be a worldwide automotive celebration."
I think the question, as far as wrapping up the intial vision statement goes, might be this: IF we were to achieve the vision above, would there still be something MISSING?
"...open wheel race cars designed for competition at the Indianapolis 500"
ReplyDeleteMuskie, when I read that I thought "YEAH!"
But after visiting the link Roggespierre provided, I can see how something like that might be more fit for a mission statement.
For example, in order to achieve the vision of a number-one American series centered on the 500, we must use open wheel cars "designed for competition at the Indianapolis 500" and we must give spectators "a motorsports experience they cannot get anywhere else" (Rocketman54).
Is this making sense? Am I interpreting "vision" and "mission" the right way here, Roggespierre?
Hi "R"
ReplyDeleteYou're doing a good job. This is a good exercise. I'm watching.
GM Said: "Does this not imply that you want a series to go along with the 500? If it does then you are arguing against yourself."
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm merely going along "as if" - not that I buy a series' viability at this point. A series will take large investments that I just don't see materializing for all the reasons documented on this site - not least of which is an apparent lack of market demand for one.