Photo by Bob Jansen at Unsplash
Quick: what’s your mission statement? Can you say it without looking it up? How about the rest of your team? And most importantly, how does it make you feel? If the answer isn’t some version of “proud and inspired,” then it might be time to rethink your organization’s purpose.
I use the word “purpose” intentionally. “Vision” and “mission” have become such staples of the nonprofit world that it’s easy to fall into a formulaic approach to these, making sure you have all the bases covered and including all the words that relate to your work. Sound familiar?
Lately we’ve been working with organizations that are yearning for something more. They want a central focus that doesn’t feel like a bunch of words but actually inspires and empowers the whole team and board. To get there, we’ve worked with colleagues at Idea360 to help clients break out of the way they’ve developed past mission statements. We start with the Massive Transformative Purpose.
The Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP) was first described in Exponential Organizations by Salim Israel, Mike Malone, and Yuri van Geest. The MTP is short, and every word matters. It’s a big idea, and it aims to shape every aspect of an organization’s development: transformative. Some groups use the purpose as their main public-facing statement, while others translate it into a mission statement.
Some examples of nonprofit and business purposes that fit this bill:
TED: Ideas worth spreading
Khan Academy: A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere
WalkDenver: To reclaim Denver’s streets for people.
Splash: We clean water for kids
Patagonia: We’re in business to save our home planet
Clear, impactful, and worth getting excited about.
So how do you get there? Here are some tips.
Start with leadership
Knowing that leaders are committed to holding a big purpose helps everyone else take it seriously. At a recent retreat, the organization’s CEO, board chair and vice chair all stood up to express how important it was to move forward together around a core purpose.
Set the stage
One way to get in the big picture mindset is through a preferred future visioning. Participants are randomly assigned a “utopian” or “dystopian” future to envision. From it, we draw out the big dreams that the organization hopes to see emerge from their work.
Prototype
This tool from design thinking can be a powerful driver. Small groups get to come up with prototypes, or initial framings, of the new purpose statements. Include some constraints that force people to stretch. Maybe it’s a ten-word limit. Maybe it’s a list of words that are off-limits. Or other rules like “Money is no object” or “Take a risk with this statement.”
Push the envelope
Even with instructions designed to encourage outside-the-box thinking, group think can lead to lowest-common-denominator or “safe” statements. Counter this with additional ways to drive creative thought. Maybe it’s “Revise the prototype statement to something that might get you fired,” or “Make it simpler—drop at least 3 words” or “Role play with enthusiasts vs skeptics.”
Vote with your feet
Next, put the group’s rough statements up on flip chart pages around the room. Ask each participant to go stand by the one they like best. Assuming they don’t all pick the same one, you can run a second round where only the top two choices are available. From there, allow some negotiation, e.g. “I could go for option 1 if I can bring this word with me.” You should get to at least a pretty strong working statement that a few people can finalize—do your best to minimize wordsmithing in the large group. For an online session, use a virtual whiteboard and give each person an avatar or a sticky note that they can move around in a similar fashion, plus the ability to write notes about what matters to them.
We used this approach with Semester At Sea, a study abroad program. Their old mission was:
To educate individuals with the global understanding necessary to address the challenges of our interdependent world. With the world as our classroom, our programs integrate multiple-country study, interdisciplinary coursework, and experiential learning for meaningful engagement in the global community.
A 40-person group was able to agree on this core purpose:
Journeys of discovery that spark bold solutions to global challenges
Short and inspiring.
It also incorporates a big new idea that the organization decided to embrace: that their voyages were not just about educating students, but sparking them to take action on critical issues. This purpose drove a new strategy around the idea of catalyzing a lifelong journey from a single trip. Not bad for a day’s work.
You can learn more about our work here. Or view Idea360’s case study on Semester at Sea.