One of the most important things you can do is to identify your team’s mission.
And one of the biggest wastes of time is creating a mission statement that is not used.
How to Write a Mission Statement in 5 Steps explains what a mission statement is and how to write one. But simply writing a good statement does not ensure it will be used.
How you create it is as important as what it says.
Avoid these six common traps to craft a powerful mission statement that provides guidance for strategic decisions, focuses your team’s energies, and increases their commitment, clarity and trust.
Trap #1: Seeing this as an activity to complete.
Approaching the idea of a mission statement as a task to be completed means that once you’re done, you move on to another task. And your mission statement gets filed and forgotten.
Instead, think of this as the process of surfacing important information that you need to guide your decision-making.
Trap #2: Focusing on the words instead of the meaning.
Too often people turn this into a writing project, without first getting very clear on the concepts they want to communicate. Focus on understanding first and the wording later, or you will end up with a vanilla, blah-blah-blah statement.
Trap #3: Over- or under-involvement by leaders.
Too often leaders swing toward one of these poles: they either complete the work and then announce their results (over-involvement) or they delegate the task to a committee and disengage (under-involvement).
By staying involved, you demonstrate you are invested in this work. By involving others, you get more information, a broader perspective and ensure their investment.
Trap #4: Lack of team-wide conversation.
Simply sharing the mission statement is not enough. If you want it to guide people, they need an opportunity for conversation about what it means and its implications. Without conversation, the words on paper will not mean the same thing to them that it does to you.
Trap #5: Focusing on the external message first.
Too often creating a mission statement is seen as simply a marketing message – a way to communicate to the public what the company is about. When you approach it from this perspective, you lose its most important advantage – to provide internal guidance, team alignment, and increase team commitment.
Focus first on what you are communicating internally. Later you can partner with marketing to craft the external message and possibly tweak your mission statement, as long as it doesn’t dilute the meaning.
Trap #6: Lack of ongoing feedback.
Have you articulated a mission that coalesces and guides your team? You won’t know unless you get ongoing feedback on how it is being used and how effective it is. If you discover your team’s mission is not guiding strategic decisions, find out why. Is it because the mission statement is unclear, because people don’t agree it, or because people are unintentionally making decisions that will dilute your focus? By setting up ongoing feedback processes, you can quickly realign before you get into trouble. And you ensure your mission statement will not be filed and forgotten.
Jesse
I always find #2 to be one of the toughest. The line to be drawn between word smithing and meaning is a very thin one in my experience. One person’s word smithing is another’s deeper meaning. I’ve found that the more people engaged in this conversation the more people tend to appreciate each other’s input. It’s paradoxical. You’d imagine it being the other way ’round. But there is something where people’s higher selves seems to be called forth when they know they are part of a much larger whole.
What has been your experience? Others?
I agree Jake. My experience is that as soon as a pen comes out, people shift their thinking to edit mode. It’s subtle, quick, and they don’t realize they’re doing it. I encourage people to keep talking until there is mutual understanding and agreement before they start writing anything.
Jake, I have found the same dynamic. A bunch of old-time management types wrote the first MS for us (fire department) back in the mid-80s. Very staid and ho-hum. When we really started to involve people around the why and the who we are, in conversations around the kitchen table, in the early 2000’s, it jumped to a much higher level, and again last year, yet another quantum leap. I think you have to look at the wider picture when you start in to revise your MS: we do a Credo, our Core Values and a Risk Statement: what we will and will not do.
Thanks, Jesse, for this nice post! We developed a situation where the Values and Expectations became weaponized (“Those guys aren’t living up to our values, they should be disciplined!”). I think these statements and self-identification must be positive ideals rather than Do this or you’re Gone.
Thanks for sharing the evolution in your own organization, Dave. You know you’ve come a long way when people are accountable not only for results but also for how they achieve them.
With regard to Traps #1 and #6, a Mission Statement should be considered a ‘dynamic document’ – not that it has to be rewritten totally on a regular basis but that it should reviewed, reflected upon, and – maybe – tweaked regularly. Most times there will be no changes; but the intentional review and discussion will keep it in the thinking of employees – a very good thing!!!
Good point, John. It might not change, but regular review and discussion reminds you to stay focused on what’s important.
Brilliant. Mission statements to me are almost always a bunch of silly words that mean nothing specifically for the reasons you itemize: they were ill-crafted and conceived. Jake is right: oh the fight over “words” instead of asking what those words really mean AND– another point– how would we know we were living our mission. Mission to me is the larger WHY behind an organization. It can be audacious, bold, and simple. One non-profit I have worked with had a simple mission: eradicate childhood cancer. Everyone and everything they did had to feed into that mission. At the same time, it might develop that they add to it with: and provide care, counseling, and compassion for families dealing with childhood cancer. As always, Jesse, you are spot on
Lots of insightful thoughts, Eileen. I especially appreciate your emphasis on the importance of being specific.
hi Jess,
I have two questions. My superiors, at the head of the school district, created a no-hum mission statement with no input from educators. It’s not a mission statement; it’s a statement of the obvious and one that they violate every day. Is there anything we can do about that?
Second, I work with a ‘team’ that is not an official ‘team’. It’s an ad-hoc group of educators I support. Should I propose that we write our missing n statement this year? I want to empower them to be powerful on their own and not wait for administration to create opportunities for them. (It isn’t going to happen). Thoughts?
Susan, how about this: imagine yourself as a leader of the folks within your spheres of influence. They’re your ad hoc “organizations.” Without denigrating the official bosses in your world, imagine having conversations with your peeps about initiatives you all would love to bring to life, and how willing they are to be in action with them. Might this approach appeal to you as a way to transform your experience in both scenarios?
Hi Susan,
In response to your second question, a “team” is a group with a common purpose, interdependency in fulfilling that purpose and a means of communication. If that group has meetings, then it has the possibility of becoming a team, whether or not it is official sanctioned by the school district. Whether or not they create a mission statement, clarifying the mission (or purpose) could be very helpful to them. I think this is what Lowell is suggesting. This post might be helpful to you as it has some specific suggestions on questions your team could discuss: https://seapointcenter.com/organizational-change-can-start-wherever-you-are/
It also makes the point that a team can have a clear mission, vision or purpose even when the larger organization does not.
As for your first question, I would need more information about your relationship with the senior leaders, what has been tried in the past, and a sense of the politics and group dynamics before I could make a recommendation. It’s important to have a sense of the system before attempting systems change. It’s possible you could make some suggestions, but if you don’t have the ear of someone on that team, there’s no point in beating your head against the wall. If that’s the case, I’d suggest you focus your energies on your own team, within your sphere of influence.