Success Habit: A Personal Mission Statement

The power of mission statements for enterprises of all sizes has been shown again and again. Enterprises with strong mission statements have dramatically improved performance, increased value, and become industry leaders. The evidence for this is all around. Moving this powerful tool to the personal level can similarly help you reach your goals and become more successful. What Makes a Good Mission Statement? When creating a mission statement you need to consider both the purpose and the format of the statement. A good mission statement serves two purposes, to focus and inspire. The format of the statement needs to be clear and concise. The first purpose of a mission statement is to focus attention on the one or two key characteristics of the enterprise. What is the one thing, the one characteristic, the one aspect of the business which is the key? What is it that completely overrides all other aspects of the enterprise behavior? Nike, for example, is about sport shoes, particularly high performance sport shoes with the latest technology. While they sell many other things, their primary product is their shoes. So their mission statement is about bringing innovation to their customers, among other things. The second purpose is to inspire people and engage their attention. The statement needs to inspire employees to do their best, customers to like the products, vendors to want to do business, and more. If we focus on the employees, the mission statement is about getting the employee to engage with their job, their peers, and their results. Engaged people do more, create more, and produce more. Inspired people create a synergy which goes significantly beyond the sum of their individual elements. One of the classic examples of this synergy is the Apollo space program. While each did their part, as a team these people created something different from anything that has happened either before or after. And for something to inspire, it has to be something that people enjoy saying, reading, and hearing. The format of a good mission statement is as important as the content. The statement needs be short, easily remembered. It needs to have a rhythm, a cadence, which helps people remember it. The words need to be simple, clear, and uplifting. Too many mission statements try to be everything to everybody, and become monsters. A mission statement is almost a slogan or a branding because the mission statement expresses the heart of the enterprise. Making a Personal Mission Statement Mission statements were first used for enterprises, but they have migrated into the world of personal self development. This makes the mission statement both easier and harder to create and use. Again, the effort is definitely worth it when you look at the results. A personal mission statement is harder to create because it is just you. In an enterprise, the creation of a mission statement can draw upon the thoughts, expertise, and experience of many different people. This makes the creation easier, since aspects that one person will forget, or be unaware of, will be remembered by others. The process of creating a mission statement, if properly carried out, can release a synergistic effort which can create a spectacular result; it can be a wonderful team-building exercise. But when it is just you, working on a personal mission statement, you need to find the synergy in yourself. When this happens, you can literally transform yourself. However, an enterprise mission statement runs large risk of becoming nothing more than another committee statement, whose effectiveness is precisely zero. A personal mission statement is much easier to create from this aspect, since it is the output of a single person. Therefore, a personal mission statement is almost always clear and focused, which are essential. Also, since a personal mission statement comes from a single person, there is no miscommunication in the process. Understanding the Process Making a personal mission statement is very similar to making an enterprise mission statement. In both cases, there is a brainstorming phase, a formation phase, and an editing phase. In the brainstorming phase, you need to simply start listing what aspects you consider to be part of what you do. List everything, and do not edit the list yet. Just keep generating. Maybe you get input from others. You might consider using future visualizations. Ask yourself questions about what you do and what you want to do, where you want to go. A good exercise to help this process is to imagine you are writing your own obituary. What is your desired legacy? What do you want people to remember about you? Who and what do you want to leave behind when you are gone? In the formation phase, you go through the list and start deciding what you want as part of your mission statement. You will probably have to go through the list more than once, pruning the list each time. You want to get down to just one, two, maybe three ideas. If you feel that is too restrictive, consider creating more than one mission statement, one for each part of your life. Finally, write your statement. Then read it, making any necessary adjustments. Then read it aloud. Then do something else and come back to it later. Keep doing this until you feel it is right. Remember, you want it short and sweet, so keep going, reworking the statement again and again. At some point, you will have a mission statement which works. And that can make all the difference.