Monthly Archives: March 2018

Welcome back!

As a leader you have three mission statements to concern yourself with: yours, the team’s, and the organization’s. First, if you don’t have your own mission statement for your leadership in your current role, you are doing a disservice to yourself (and everyone else). One of the most important things you can do for the team is to decide for yourself what your leadership career is all about, why you are doing it, what you value along the way, and how you plan to accomplish good outcomes. Second, conduct exercises with your team to choose as a group what your mission, vision, values, and strategic plan will be. Don’t just adopt what the organization’s stated positions are, craft your own in alignment with the greater goals. Discuss and decide how you want your group to function, what you’re trying to accomplish, and how you’ll treat each other, along with anything else your team values enough to declare and then be held accountable for. Then meet periodically to talk about the progress the team is making towards accomplishing both group and organizational goals. Specifically discuss the mission, vision, values, and strategic plans, including whether or not you are living up to them individually and collectively. Adjust as necessary, and keep moving forward together.

View your leadership as an adventure, the mission with your team as an expedition, and it will help you keep the fun in the job while you produce serious results.

Until next time, have fun taking a step back with your team and creating a common starting point that brings out the best in all of you!

Welcome back! 🙂

As a leader, you are not only tasked with fulfilling the mission, it is your responsibility to help evolve it over time. The mission must adapt to internal and external business realities and environments. Today’s organizations are called upon more and more to keep up with competitive demands and dwindling resources. Evolve the mission so that you are riding the surf instead of being thrown around by the waves. It only takes one scandal, one bad economic decision, or one breach of public trust to dismantle even the hardiest of companies these days. Robustly defining and regularly updating the mission, and then insisting that every level of the company make mission driven decisions, creates a buffer zone that protects the viability and longevity of the organization. It is also an essential step towards scandal proofing your organization. When a well thought out, carefully vetted, contemporary mission is the defining factor in organizational life, it is much harder for anyone to stray off course.

The mission is the reason your organization exists. Your company (or team, or non-profit, etc) was created because someone had a dream, and they had very particular ideas about how those goals should be accomplished. It only makes sense that once an enterprise of any kind is up and running, adjustments will have to be made. One of the healthiest activities any organization can engage in, is stepping back regularly to ask “Is this still where we want to go and how we want to get there?” Refining the mission as you gain experience in the marketplace (or on the ballfield or in the boardroom) makes good sense and allows you to proactively adapt to changing circumstances.

Until next time, I’ll be praying for you as you dissect your organization’s mission to determine whether or not it is still relevant, or is in need of an update.