The Mission Statement Wrestling Match

A CLIENT OF MINE IS WRESTLING WITH REVISING ITS mission statement. And wrestling is a good word for it. Writing a deceptively simple, but truly meaningful, statement is not easy. So many mission statements are mired in the what's and how's of an organization's activities that they barely acknowledge an audience or rarely talk about the whys of their existence. (Hint: audience and the whys of existence are the two most important things.)

I've written (and spoken) a lot about this here. One of the connecting themes to all those posts is about digging deep to taste and savor meaning; to layer in texture and color; to make the statement connect on some emotional level with the people who read it. In fact, the mission statement is not so much about helping the folks within the organization decipher what the organization is, as it's about helping folks outside the organization discover your power and purpose.

Here are some of the words from the image above that came from a mission brainstorming session: "design dialogue", "forge", "nurture", "weave", "enable", "facilitate relationships", "outreach", "galvanize". These are the people words of an organization. These, and other words like them, are the connective tissue that is so often missing in the "official" statements organizations use when talking about themselves.

I'll use my client's example (with names changed, of course) to show you what I'm talking about. The current mission statement is this:

The mission of the Old House Museum is presently to preserve the Smith family home in Our Town, interpret its history between 1740 and 1880 and educate the public.

Really grabs you, doesn't it? The focus is squarely on preserving that old house and talking about its evolution. Oh, yeah -- and educating the public. "Educating the public" reads like an afterthought to me.

So, they're thinking they might want to revise the current statement to this:

The mission of the Old House Museum is to preserve the Our Town home of the Smith family, prominent merchants and heroic patriots, who lived here for many generations, and to engage the community by sharing their history through educational programs and exhibits.

But, frankly, it's just a longer version of what they already have. Would this make you want to visit or become involved any more than the mission statement they already have?

What if the museum were to put the community engagement piece first? What if the mission is about bringing you into the story of how one person, one family, can have an impact on the course of community and country? The dynamic starts to change. Regular folks can start to see themselves in that mission -- you've opened the door to your organization for them.

So, here are three suggestions for revising your lackluster mission statement today:

Write a mission statement for the person who doesn't know anything about you.
Focus the first phrase or sentence of your statement on your audience.
Let readers see themselves in the story of your mission by connecting the whys of what your organization does to their lives.

Can you help my client by redrafting their mission statement?

Photo: Mission Statement Brainstorming from design_bridge_do

Back in the Saddle

MY LAST POST WAS NOVEMBER 2012, A LIGHT YEAR AWAY it seems, that marked the beginning of a long push toward completing a manuscript on history museum leadership with my co-author, Joan Baldwin. We finally submitted 350+ pages to our editor at Rowman & Littlefield this week. If all goes well, we expect the book to be available in early 2014. It's taken us two years to get to this point, so six more months or so of revision and production don't seem too long to wait until we can hold the final product in our hands (and you can, too!). The project put a lot of things on hold, including this blog. I'm glad to be back writing about intentional leadership -- leading by design -- for nonprofit boards and staffs. Certainly, my thoughts are now informed by the forthcoming book, in which Joan and I posit that nonprofits need to focus resources on leadership, not just management. Most cultural nonprofits are at a crossroad, as is the sector in general, where nothing is qu

Change for Your Board in 2010: A Polling Update

WE'RE A DAY INTO MY LAST POLL (SEE RIGHT) AND the responses are clustering in two areas: 1) removing dead wood from the board and 2) using better/different tools to make decisions/evaluate performance. There are still six days left for your colleagues to cast their vote! In the meantime, those of you who are in need of tools for decision-making might want to check my posts on taking stock here , here and here .

Three Most Important Nonprofit Executive Director Soft Skills

If you were asked to narrow down the list of executive director qualifications to the three most important, which ones would you identify? Would the list consist of soft skills, hard skills, or some combination? Would your list be based on the great ED you are or one you've worked for, or would it be your wish list for the ED you haven't been fortunate yet to work for? This was an assignment in my recent online class in leadership and administration for the American Association for State and Local History . I asked the class to review three-five advertisements for museum directors and analyze what these listings intimated about the organization’s past experience, current focus and goals, and future aspirations. Then, I asked the class to identify what they consider to be the three most important qualifications they would look for in a director. (Okay, so there's more than three if you dissect my three big groups.) Soft skills outnumbered hard skills, although

kay sato said…

The Our Town Community will experience first-hand what it once meant to be a prominent merchant and heroic patriot, by engaging in educational programs, exhibits, and activities which highlight the lives of the Smith Family, builders of the Old House Museum and its occupants for generations.

December 8, 2009 at 6:22 PM

Anne W. Ackerson said…

Thanks, Kay! Good to hear from you.

December 9, 2009 at 2:45 PM

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