Mission is—as we write on our website—the central aspect of leadership and organizational strategy too often overlooked and underutilized, as this article from Harvard Business Review notes.
An excerpt.
“Mission" for nonprofits is the same as "profits" for private sector companies. In the private sector, corporations achieve their goals by carefully designing business operations that are reflected in a budget and then regularly reporting on how actual profits compare to that budget. If mission accomplishment is as important as profit attainment, why do most nonprofits not spend equivalent time in mission creation and monitoring?
“In reality, nonprofits often completely mess this up. As important as missions are, nonprofits frequently go off in ineffective directions by relying on mission statements that can be little more than slogans. At a time when nonprofits around the world are struggling both to stay afloat and to achieve their missions, they are missing out on one of the most valuable tools available to them.
“As important as they are, mission statements are frequently little more than slogans. Many are lengthy and ambiguous or, to be useful, they must be accompanied by vision statements and lists of values, goals, principles and objectives. Because they are not carefully constructed, most mission statements cannot be used for regular and rigorous analysis, as is the case with corporate sales and profits. Furthermore, many nonprofit managers do not instill the discipline in their organizations to use the mission on a regular basis as a tool to make decisions and achieve goals. Quite the opposite is true with the sales and profit budgets of successful corporations.
“An effective mission statement must be a clear description of where an organization is headed in the future that distinctly sets it apart from other entities and makes a compelling case for the need it fills. Furthermore, this mission must be short, memorable and appropriate for a variety of organizational stakeholders including, for example, employees, funding sources, served constituencies and the Board of Trustees.”
About
- David H. Lukenbill
- I am a California native, married, we have one daughter and live close to the American River with two cats and all the wild critters we can feed. I am a management consultant to nonprofit organizations and have an Associates of Arts degree in Administration of Justice from Sacramento City College, a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Public Administration degree, also from the University of San Francisco.