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A Quick Moment for Mission
Statements.....
A Mission Statement
basically tells the Reader's Digest Condensed
version of why your business is in existence, or
what you hope to personally accomplish, or
"the rules" that your committee or
family or group hope to function by successfully.
Some examples of Mission Statements are quite
familiar.
Does this ring a bell?
Jeffrey Abraham, author of The
Mission Statement Book uses
this famous excerpt as an example of a Mission
Statement before its time. "SPACE,
the final frontier. These are the voyages of the
Starship Enterprise. Its five year mission: To
explore strange new worlds, to seek new life and
new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has
gone."
Gene Roddenberry did not
know he was such a trendsetter (at least as far
as Mission Statements go) but look how well
thought out it is, complete with a preamble where
he makes some key definitions. What are we
talking about? Space! Voyages! traveling the
final frontier! Then he launches right into
purpose, and as most of us know, Captain Kirk and
Spock et al set out to achieve those very things
that were outlined in the Mission Statement. How
do you think they did?
*****************************************************
A
Movie, Marriott and More:
Creating Your Mission Statement
by Julie Jordan Scott
The opening scenes of Jerry
Maguire are forever
imprinted in my minds eye. As the audience, we
are shown a brief synopsis of Jerry's life as a
high powered Sports Agent who manages the careers
of a multitude of big money athletes. He is at a
convention of some kind with all of his fellow
Sports Agents.
We enter a dream sequence.
Jerry is jarred awake while dreaming with an
epiphany of sorts as he raises this question in
an internal dialogue. "Who had I become? A
shark in a suit? I hated myself. I hated my place
in this world." Like a man possessed, he
rose out of his bed and sat down at the laptop he
had set up in his hotel room. Jerry continued to
speak inside his head, "One page became
twenty five, I became my father's son
again." He went on to say how he remembered
the wise words of his mentor who said "The
key to this business is personal
relationships."
Feverishly, Jerry crafted
his Personal Manifesto. "I had lost the
ability to BS," he wrote, "It (the
Mission Statement) was the me I had always wanted
to be." He entitled his work "The
Things We Think and Do Not Say." He took his
work to a 24 hour copy store so that he could
distribute his wisdom to the other Sports Agents.
The long haired clerk at the store looked into
his eyes and said, surferesque, "That's how
you become great, man!" Jerry put a copy in
each mailbox of his peers and blissfully went to
sleep.
Temporarily, anyway. We
soon learn that for Jerry, proclaiming what he
believed through his Mission Statement was indeed
a risky business. He called the hotel desk clerk
when he once again awoke with a start to see if
the copies of his Mission Statement been picked
up by his peers. To his horror, it was reported
that many copies of his work had been
distributed.
Jerry soon found his life
seriously altered by what he believed. He quickly
lost his high powered job and found himself
living out his Mission Statement, but it was far
from comfortable. Sure, his mentor had said
"The key to this business is personal
relationships," but did his only client have
to be so obnoxious, arrogant, loud and forever
adding insult to injury, by continually spouting
the now trademark "Show me the money!"
phrase over and over and over?
We live alongside Jerry for
two hours, cheering him through personal
financial ruin, romance, marriage, separation,
reunion, and finally the rebuilding of his
career. But it is a career on HIS terms, in HIS
way, following HIS manifesto and HIS alone!
Do all Mission statements
need to be written at times of such personal
awakening a la Jerry Maguire? Not at all! Mission
statements can be mulled over, rewritten,
revised, reduced and reiterated. They can be
written alone, which would be a Personal Mission
statement, or they can be written collaboratively
with a team work approach. A Mission Statement
can be written for a Family or Organization. They
can be one sentence, they can be pages upon pages
upon pages. There is no set formula in a format
for Mission Statements, however the basics are
the same regardless of structure or length.
Well, for Jerry Maguire its
one thing, but for me? Why Write a Mission
Statement?
Why should I take time out
from my busy schedule trying to get my venture up
and running to write a Mission Statement? The
answer to this is simple. Some people may choose
to travel to an unknown destination without a
roadmap, but most will get to their destination
more quickly if a map is carefully drawn out
prior to putting the key into ignition putting
the foot on the gas.
Carefully crafting your
Mission Statement could be paramount in mapping
out your future. Think for a moment. Why did you
start your endeavor? What were you hoping to do
that had not been done before? Simply stated,
what is the purpose for your project? How will
you do things differently? Jerry Maguire had
multiple reasons for striking out as he did, for
being a Sports Agent in a different way. What are
your reasons? Why is your heart calling out to
you to step out and see this project to fruition?
Secondly, your Mission
Statement can bring focus to your exact
priorities. You may believe in your mind what
your priorities are but when you actually sit
down with a pen to paper or fingers to the
keyboard you may be surprised with what you
discover.
Hit a roadblock in creating
your Mission Statement? Maybe you are saying to
yourself, I have NO IDEA know what either my
purpose or priorities are at this point! Do not
be discouraged! I have found that the easiest
thing to do at this point is to take a deep
breath, relax and brainstorm for ten or fifteen
minutes.
Take out a blank sheet of
paper or bring up a blank document on your
computer. Ask yourself the questions that were
brought up about your purpose for starting this
project. What were you personally looking for,
yearning for, hoping for? Where are the Passions
within you for this particular project? Chances
are you would not start something you did not
enjoy a lot, because your success would be highly
unlikely in that case! So don't even consciously
think! Don't worry about making sense: just let
the words flow. One word, phrase or sentence at a
time.
This will help unblock your
mind as well as remind you what your project is
all about. If you had fallen out of love with
your project, this will be a great tool to
re-ignite the Passion that you once had for it!
Discovering your purpose
should then remind you of your priorities. Your
Purpose uncovers the why, while the priorities
uncover which of your smaller tasks comes first.
Look at each task in small, manageable chunks,
breaking each one down as far as you need to and
date when each task should be completed.
Creating this website makes
a perfect example! The date I set for
"completion" (although it will always
be a work in progress) of the site is September
1, 1999. Actually, this is the date when I want
all components to be functioning efficiently: all
the Passion Pages with an active article and
profile to be changed bi-weekly, Ezines for each
Passion, Bulletin Boards in place and with
dialogue taking place, the Passion Surveys being
easily accessible and regularly utilized by the
Guests at my Site.
So, in addition to
prioritizing, I had to map out my plan. It is
mid-July and I have quite a few of these aspects
in place. One of the first tasks I chose to
complete was crafting a brief Mission Statement
which would be a herald atop all my main pages. I
knew the next step would be building the skeleton
of the site, deciding what format to use and that
sort of thing. This was a big challenge since I
am not a technical person. For practice, I built
a personal website, with the assistance of a dear
friend who knows a lot more about computers than
I do! With my 5Passions page, there was a lot of
teamwork in its creation, including requesting
people from other sites to come visit mine and
give me constructive criticism.
I also knew I would need to
have bulletin boards and ezines in order to build
a sense of community, since that is something
that is a very high priority for me. With my
friend and "partner in building my
site" I found some free bulletin boards, as
well as finding a list host to use for my ezine,
both for free. I mapped out a very
"do-able" schedule for the creation of
my e- zines. So on a rigorous yet not
overwhelming schedule, all the pieces are getting
into place.
Finally, you want your
Mission Statement to be an evolving document that
can take your project from here into perpetuity.
Once you have written it, it can be revisited and
revised as need be. Sections can be added and
deleted over time. Most importantly, you want
your overall Mission Statement to have that
feeling of "YES! This is My
(Our)Mission!" It should evoke a sense of
Joy, a sense of the good old fashioned marching
orders we were given by our childhood coaches.
The Mission Statement at
Marriott International brings to mind this
quality. Its Statement is simply this: "We
are committed to being the best lodging and
management service company in the world by
treating employees in ways that create
extraordinairy customer service and value."
They strive to be the best! And how will they do
that? By treating their employees in ways that
will create extraordinairy service! Now that says
something! Treat your employees well and guess
what happens? And in Marriot's statement there is
no doubt who is paramount in the corporate
culture. Imagine how employees react knowing how
highly they are placed in the mind of the Top
Echelon of the company?
So what's stopping you? Get
out your favorite writing tool and start crafting
your Mission Statement. Jerry found love and a
new life when he wrote his! What are you going to
find? I think you will find something near and
dear to your heart. Chances are, you will find
You!
****************************************************
What did you think of this
article? Please give me feedback on the message
boards!
***********************************************
"Whatever your sex or
position, life is a battle in which you are to
show your pluck, and woe be to the coward.
Whether passed on a bed of sickness or a tented
field, it is ever the same fair play and admits
no foolish distinction. Despair and postponement
are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to
succeed, not to fail" **** Henry David
Thoreau
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