Role of Vision at Mentor Graphics Research Paper

Role of Vision at Mentor Graphics - Research Paper Example Mentor Graphics in its quest to keep up lost its direction and ended up struggling to stay afloat. In the process Mentor Graphics lost sight of what it had set out to achieve. Vision is being used as a competitive mantra to beat their opponents. This was a reactionary measure when a new entrant came into the scene. In changing its vision because of competition, Mentor Graphics was focusing on its short term goals and in essence abandoning its long-term goals. Instead of using vision as an agent would strategically bring about change, Mentor Graphics used change as an architect of its vision. This is simply catastrophic at the very least and non-strategic. Another way vision is used is to capture the attention of its customer. Gerard Langeler and his team change their vision to make it more appealing to them. Again this is a deviation from its set objectives. Mentor Graphics even goes as far as basing their vision on the key pillars of their business based on stock performance. This random uncalculated move sank them into a quagmire situation when one of their key pillars does not yield profits. Again this is a reactionary move necessitated by the need to fix a short-term goal (Gratton, 2004). The vicious cycle of randomly conceived visions serves only to cast the company further away from their goals. The changes made to the vision of Mentor Graphics only favored it in the short term. Whilst its sales may have gone up in the short run, in the long run it distanced the company from its set out objectives hence business kept declining (Gratton,2004) .Thus the continuous changes made to the vision only worked to weaken and hurt the company in its long term goals. The main reason why vision failed miserably at Mentor Graphics was lack of a well-conceived strategy from the start. The company failed in strategically planning its course of action in the future. Their inconsistence in the criteria they used to come up with vision statements had long-term