Yes, that’s right, kill your organization’s mission statement. Instead, express your mission in three words—four if you have to. Guy Kawasaki calls this a mantra, as good a name as any.
You probably don’t remember your organization’s mission statement. If you do, you work for People for the American Way (don’t ask me why, but they are the only one’s I have ever met who know their official mission statement).
Instead, use this process to find the three words that express your passion and mission all in one.
Do you know about freewriting? It’s a wonderful process, developed and put to very good use by Peter Elbow in Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process
Freewriting is a simple process that goes as follows. You take a stem, a short unfinished phrase and from that stem you start to write for ten minutes. During those ten minutes, you do not take your pen off the paper for any reason. You keep writing. Your writing isn’t good or bad, it just flows out. Don’t stop writing though, that is the critical piece. Write that you don’t know what to write before you stop, but keep writing, because something else will pop in your mind and you will find an idea you didn’t even realize you had.
I was asked once to freewrite following this stem: “I believe in my organization because …” And here is some of what I wrote about my work for the Ark of Refuge (don’t mind the grammar or style, that is not the point):
I believe in my organization because I have seen people who were left behind by everybody be restored to loved, loving, participating individuals. They regained a sense of pride and purpose which many are now sharing with those who live in circumstances they have left behind. This is an organization that gives hope and restores lives.
When I read this out loud, which is what I want you to do too, three words popped out and seemed to automatically sum up what it is the Ark of Refuge is doing. “We restore lives.”
Ever since that day, when people ask me what the Ark of Refuge does, that is my answer: We restore lives. Now, just to make a side point here, this organization has an official mission statement. Your organization does too, no doubt. Do you remember what it is? You don’t. I don’t either and I had to look it up:
The mission of the Ark of Refuge is to challenge and overcome the individual and institutional barriers which discourage or prevent underserved populations from accessing vital services. This agency is dedicated to creating culturally sensitive programs which address holistically the complex life circumstances of persons in need of basic health, educational, and psychosocial services.
A worthy and lofty mission statement. I don’t even know how it came about and I want to be respectful of the people who developed it. But when I talk with people about our work, all I say is: “We restore lives.” Nobody cares about the mission statement, but they care when I share my passion.
So that is what I want you to do next. Sit down preferably with your team, your group, and take ten minutes. Take this stem “I believe in my organization, because . . . .” Put pen to paper for ten minutes and write without stopping.
Go!
Take a breath.
Share with each other what you wrote.
Listen to each other. Do you hear those three words in each other’s writing, those words that seem to say it all? Did the passion for your work not drip from every word? Was there not a special phrase that makes it so memorable? Help each other find those words.
It probably won’t take long before your whole group found those words in someone’s writing that tell the story for all of you. If you share the same work and are passionate about it, I bet that within another five minutes you can agree on three or four words that say it all. “We restore lives.”
What are you words?
