Bill -
I first got clear about the value of "mission" during a career in the
Navy. I'm not talking about the normal military use of the term, although
that's useful. But the tougher questions, like what's the "mission" of a
warship in peacetime?
Since retirement in '84, I've built our consulting practice from the basis
that every organization must know its mission: the core reason it exists,
if it is going to survive over time, much less be successful.
We've had to address the kinds of experiences you've encountered. Some of
the answers are flippant, but I acknowledge your commitment, and am not
being disrespectful.
>Experiences include:
>
> - Visioning takes so long that we lose interest
Do it quicker! We can usually facilitate a group to their core vision
within a day...or two at the most. If you drag it out, you actually
create some of the problems you talk about below. Other items, beside the
mission statement, are usually necessary to get the mission in action, but
the core identification process only takes a few hours.
I also try to *not* get too many stakeholders into the process. The
people that should discover the mission are those in the organization that
"have the authentic right and responsiblity to mission the organization."
The group varies from organization to organization.
> - There are so many different individual visions that we
> lose a lot of them in the blending
The core reason a company exists is not a "mush," so "blending" usually
isn't the fruitful approach. It's like "concensus." Useful until you get
to a core issue...then concensus often disappears. I'll say more about
this is an minute.
> - After we have the vision, it's nice but then we get back
> to work (ignoring it)
The mission is who the company *is*. What happens next is what you *do*
now that you know who you *are*. To not "ignore" it, you need to
constantly reaffirm it. Going back to what you were, before you got this
clarity, defeats the purpose of clarifying the vision.
>Some thought provoking questions that emerged were:
(I've resequenced these to group them for response.)
>Why does this vision stuff drive us nuts?
Cheer up! It may be "simple," but nobody said it was "easy"! <g>
>If we write a vision, so what? What happens next?
>Why don't things happen?
Use it! Tell the world your mission (who you are). Good "operational"
questions are: "How is what you're doing (the mission)?" "What have you
discovered today being (the mission)?" "How is your work different now
that you're clear you're (the mission)?" Notice these tend to be *is*
questions, not *doing* questions. If the mission is to live, it must *be*
in the organization.
>Why does it get watered down?
>Why is the final written copy the LEAST amount than everyone agrees to?
>How SHARED does it have to be?
Back to my "concensus" comment above. The secret to the *real* mission
for an organization is that it is *beyond* indivdual missions...not a
conglomeration of them. It's deeper than the individual missions. It's
what underlies and supports everyone in the organization...the essense.
In most cases the mission should be as short and sweet as possible. I'm
talking about 4 or 5 words at the most. You want everyone inside and
outside the company to say it exactly the same way. If it's any longer
than a few words, that won't happen.
To give a couple of examples, the mission of an HMO hospital we worked
with was "Healthy Member." That got beyond all the cut-'em, heal-'em,
wellness, cost-control missions that are rampant within a typical HMO. A
high-tech manufacturer's mission is "Create the Opportunities." In the
cut-throat world of computers, this works very well. A trucking firm's
mission is "We keep our *customer's* promises!" That can take them into
many areas they never saw before.
The other advantage to brevity is that it *doesn't* wind up being nothing
more than the watered-down "compilation" of everyone's pet values.
>How do we know if we are really DOING it? (measurement)
Perhaps the toughest question. I don't think anyone has a real handle on
this yet. But there are indicators. When the accreditation team
inspected the HMO hospital that got very clear about its mission, they
repeatedly mused, "What's different about this place? It's not like other
hospitals." (They, of course, couldn't believe or accept, that a clear
mission might be having this impact. The hospital passed with flying
colors, though, escaping some "discrepancies" they expected to get hit
with.) So it may be difficult to quantify, but it is there.
>Is it really the right thing to do? (When and when not?)
Always, IMHO. Sooner or later you'll wind up pushing water uphill if you
don't know the core reason you exist!
>Why VISION instead of PURPOSE?
Not sure it really matters. Some people get touchy about this, but I use
vision, mission, purpose interchangeably. Sometimes a client wants only
one word, so that's what we use for them. Otherwise, we normally use
"mission."
I could expand on all this, but let's see if this much is helpful.
Cheers,
Dick
Dick Barnett -- Management Consulting, Speaking, Seminars
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