By Jose Pagliery @CNNMoney

The federal government in 2011 missed its target of awarding 23% of all contract dollars to small businesses. That makes six straight years.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — For the sixth year in a row, the government has missed its goal to award 23% of all federal contract dollars to small businesses.

On Tuesday, the Small Business Administration reported that federal agencies gave out 21.7% to small companies. That sounds close, but means that small businesses did not receive $3.8 billion set aside for them.

The awarding goal, which was raised slightly to 23% in 1997, was part of the same 1953 law that established the SBA. It was created to support small companies and avoid having large ones, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, gobble up all the federal money.

Related: What Healthcare Reform Means for Businesses

But the government has missed the target consistently. Small businesses have missed out on at least $25.7 billion in contracts since 2006, the last year the government reached its goal.

The SBA did not provide comment about the failure of agencies to meet the goal. It pointed to a blog post that discussed its efforts to minimize fraud and increase participation of small companies.

The chairman of the House Small Business Committee, Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), has pushed legislation that aims to increase transparency in contracting and punish the agencies that fail to meet the goal.

The legislation also provides for educating contracting officers who often mislabel contracts worth millions as “small business” contracts, even though they’re directed to subsidiaries of major corporations.

A provision in the legislation also raises the goal from 23% to 25%, which sounds unrealistic given the track record.

But Graves insists even the higher target is achievable.

“Solutions to both of these problems can be accomplished at the same time. The goal hasn’t been met, because there hasn’t been an incentive for agency staff to do so,” Graves said.

The government has reached its 23% target only three times in the past dozen years.

One group long critical of federal contracting procedures said the situation is worse than it appears.

The American Small Business League, which analyzes thousands of contracts every year, points to mistakes by federal contract officers and said they inflate the numbers.

“I endorsed Barack Obama for president, but I couldn’t be more disappointed,” said Lloyd Chapman, the group’s president. “Ending the diversion of federal small business contracting to corporate giants around the world would create more jobs than anything President Obama has ever proposed.”

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Mission statement bringing workers together

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulated progress, giving birth to evolution.”

Albert Einstein in “What Life Means to Einstein,” Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929, reprinted in “ON Science.” In Cosmic Religion, 97

The transformation of a team happens in the hands of great imaginative leaders, not in indulgent knowledge seekers. While some form of education is generally a prerequisite for progress, we need to understand the balance between knowledge and imagination.

Today’s leader should understand both past and present experiences of his/her team, and use that knowledge to cultivate creative progress and imaginative learning.  As Einstein suggests, it is our imagination that will propel us to great strides in moving our teams and businesses forward.

So how do you imagine yourselves as a different team? By setting BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) to stimulate progress and guide your team through the process of creating a Vision and Mission statement. This creative procedure can help encourage your team to think of themselves and opportunities in new ways. When we can focus people on what they can become, we see small changes in the otherwise mundane.

Having a Mission and Vision statement clarifies a team’s purpose and allows them to confidently contribute to the creative process. Basically, it puts all workers on the same page and allows them to work in synergy.  A mission is simply asking yourself, “what do I need to do everyday to be successful?” While a vision statement is more aligned with, “if we do what we need to everyday, we will have succeeded.”  It is important to reference your business’s mission in moments of confusion – the ideal mission statement will refresh you of your business’s goals and put you back on the right track.

Give your teams the creative power to solve business challenges by providing clear and concise Mission and Vision statements and letting their imagination handle the rest.

The post Stimulating Creativity Among Employees: Mission and Vision Statements appeared first on Think, The Blytheco Blog.