Mission Statement

During my years consulting for non-profit organizations, I found that efforts to frame a Vision and a Mission statement were a frequent seminal exercise. Sadly, the overwhelming majority of those efforts were largely of very little value, time wasting word-smithing exercises conducted by committees in the belief that these were necessary pre-requisites to achieve their intended objectives. Years later those charters found their way into desk drawers or emblazoned on wall plaques, dusted off from time to time whenever someone dared to ask, why exactly are we here?

But before you conclude that Mission or Visioning statements are the byproduct of wooly thinking by well-intentioned do-gooders, at best inessential flimsies, let me set the record straight. I think they are crucial--for both commercial and non-profit organizations. It isn't the statements or the effort expended in crafting them that is wrong, but the order and purpose to which they are put in the life of an organization.

Regardless of what goal one sets out to accomplish in an organization, someone, at some point in time had to have more than an inkling of what they were trying to achieve, what problem they were trying to solve, what need they were trying to meet. In other words, someone had a mission in mind, however it was framed, and more importantly they had something beyond a vague idea of what would constitute success.

Let's imagine that moment in the life of a business, a philanthropic, cultural or social organization. There was purpose--a sense that someone or several someones could put their energies toward a specific goal and by hard work, luck and various means they could accomplish success--achieve the goal. All that energy and the considerable focus it requires to start any endeavor are a powerful, if at times challenging proposition. Getting baby off the ground is almost never easy.

Now let's imagine pausing in the midst of that initial and very powerful moment in time to ask what's our mission, what's our vision? That's exactly what many organizations do, believing that is a clarifying necessity. But therein is the problem. it isn't clarifying or even that helpful, at least not yet.

What's needed at precisely that moment is action--prosecution of whatever initiative sparked the venture in the first place. Of course, it will most likely veer off in unintended directions and encounter unforeseen obstacles--and maybe it will become apparent that the original intention was wrong, unattainable or misguided. That does not have to be fatal if, and only if, everyone involved accepts that failing isn't failure. It's learning what not to do, and conversely learning one of the most valuable things we can know in life; adapting to change.

As the poet Robert Burns put it, "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay". So, while we can and should plan there will be unforeseen turns, opportunities and dead ends. We need to experience enough of those initial twists of fate to truly clarify our mission. And as individuals all of us need to experience sufficient adversity in the face of heady effervescence to forge a vision that will endure. The point here, in case you missed it is that neither our mission nor our vision are static--they are aspirational. And we don't want to lay them down for the centuries until we've thought about them a good long time, and until we've experienced some of those twists and turns we did not see coming.

So, craft the mission statement and refine the vision at the right point in time when you have sufficient experience to say --this is our answer when we ask ourselves why exactly we are here. But don't do it a minute any sooner. It's been said that when you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. But when you do finally know your intended destination it's time to start drawing the map--just don't sketch in too many of the fine details, allow yourself to discover them along the way.