Purpose and Vision and Mission, OH MY!!

Nearly every organization has a purpose or vision or mission statement... OR all three of them! And, most of them suck. Sorry, it's true and you know it too. Most of these statements are not all that inspiring, real or useful to your people (more on that below). And, if they are not useful to your people, they are not useful for your customer or end-user. Fortunately, there is a use and definition for all three – your purpose, vision and mission. Oh, and your values too 😉 which we'll unpack and bring all together in the end.

Before we define and apply the terms, let's unpack why these statements are not all that impactful in the way most leaders and organizations use them.

Too often, statements of purpose, vision and mission:

1. Are too aspirational. They describe who you want to be without doing the hard work to close the gap in becoming it. That's the definition of inauthenticity and people internally and externally easily sniff that out. If your own people roll their eyes at or ignore your internal communications, external marketing and social media, chances are your purpose, vision and mission are simply nice words that are not being practiced in reality. If your people feel genuinely inspired, interested in and proud by your communications, social and marketing, you're on track! Continue to lead the hard work to become who you claim to be because customers will never love a company until the employees love it first. 
   
   
2. Put the customer and results first. I see too many organizations putting their client, customer, patient, student, etc. first, often at the sacrifice of the wellbeing of their own people. Too many leaders and organizations neglect the fact that the very people who serve those end-users are their staff. It is always your people from the inside who deliver upon and advance any of these statements of purpose, vision and mission. While an organization exists to provide value to an end-user, leaders must exist to serve their people. When people feel cared for they are all the more likely to care for one another, which leads to better performance – innovation, execution, customer experience and organizational performance. Indeed, the greatest way to improve customer experience is to start by focusing on improving staff experience. It is your inputs that lead to your outputs.
   
   
3. Serve primarily as marketing. If the focus of your purpose, vision and mission is to sell more stuff, that is disingenuous and it will not work in the long run. It is self-serving and not service oriented. The intent of purpose, vision and mission should be to serve something greater than yourself, as a leader and as an organization. I see it so often that purpose lives and is led by a marketing and communications departments. If your purpose only lives in your marketing and communications and is not meaningfully activated and embedded throughout the organization, your purpose, vision and mission will likely die as a campaign and will not become a way of operating.
   
   
4. Aren't based in real, lived experience or include stale stories of old. As you'll read in the descriptions below, these statements must live in real events from employee and customer experiences. They can be from your origin all the way to the very recent past. The strength of your culture is not in how many great stories you have from years ago. The strength of your culture (and the degree to which your purpose, vision and mission are being lived) exists in how many great stories are being created in the present, unearthed and shared inside and throughout the organization. 
   
   
5. Cause more confusion than clarity. Language matters. If you use the same terms in different ways, both internally and externally to the organization, you cause confusion. If you use a term and then have to define how you are using that term, it is simply a cause for confusion, noise and a waste of time and attention. And, this confusion of terms creates the need for organizations to refresh their purpose and vision every so often, which is an indication you haven't gotten to it in the first place.

So, let's start by defining the terms so we can use them in the same, effective way.

Purpose

Your purpose is your origin story. It comes from your past and it is the very reason your organization was founded in the first place. Think of your purpose as the foundation of a house. It won't change and everything you do and create can stem from that foundation.

As I'm the founder, my company's purpose is my own purpose. It is: To engage with people in meaningful ways, so that we connect with depth and live in a more fulfilled world. I use my purpose as a filter for decision making. When I and my team think, act and communicate with my purpose, we attract people who believe what we believe. My purpose comes from the meaningful events – the peaks and valleys – of my past. I'll spend the rest of my days trying to bring that purpose to life in everything I do – my work, my relationships, my everything. My purpose won't change – it's the foundation. What I do to bring that purpose to life can continue to morph and pivot as I go and grow and the world around us changes.

Vision

Your vision is an ideal. It is a positive and specific description of a future state. Your vision paints a clear picture in our mind's eye of a world in which your purpose is fully realized and brought to life, which it never will be. This is the reason your purpose and vision are infinite and is linked to your legacy. You can use your career, life and organization as a vehicle to advance your purpose and vision. Simon Sinek does a brilliant job of laying out the characteristics of a vision in his book The Infinite Game, which I wrote more about in this article. He outlines that a vision has these five characteristics:

• For something – a positive and specific vision of the future
• Inclusive – open to all those who would like to contribute 
• Service oriented – for the primary benefit of others
• Resilient – able to endure political, technological and cultural change
• Idealistic – big, bold and ultimately unachievable 

Mission

There is also a place for mission. Mission is finite. Mission can be accomplished. That why we say, "mission accomplished" 😉 It can be a goal, big or small. Tangible milestones we can set, adjust and reach, which helps us measure our momentum to bring our purpose to life and move closer toward advancing our vision.

It's like running a marathon...

One of the most useful analogies I've found for these distinctions is a marathon.

• Purpose is the starting line – again, it's the foundation. The basis to start running in the first place. 
  
  
• Missions & goals are the mile markers along the way. Running a marathon without mile markers is unnerving (I'm told 😜). You could be at mile 25 of a 26.2 mile marathon. Without being able to track your progress and see the finish line, you are more likely to give up or underperform. Measuring momentum helps us see and feel our progress, though in the context of our careers, lives and organizations, the metrics are not the ultimate goal and be all end all. A balance must exist in the tension to hit the targets while advancing the ultimate vision. 
  
  
• Vision is the finish line that we can see, smell, taste, hear and strive to touch though never quite reach. Remember, vision is infinite. The image of what the finish line looks like is so clear and compelling that you are driven to keep pursuing it and inspire the next generation of leaders to grab your torch and keep running with it.

That's how it all works together – purpose and vision and mission, oh my! I hope these distinctions are helpful... and...

Last call for values

Your values are vital.

Surprise, surprise! There's a key issue I see leaders and organizations doing when it comes to their values – they articulate their values as nouns or adjectives, like Respect or Integrity or Communication or Excellence. While these are nice words, they're meaningless. Those just listed were actually Enron's values – an organization whose accounting scandal, propagated by unethical leadership, caused its 2001 bankruptcy and demise.

The reason we have values is so that we live them. An equation for culture is:

Culture = (Values x Behaviour) ^ Influence

The strength of a culture is determined by the clarity of its values, multiplied by its behaviour. If you have clear values and don't live them... anything multiplied by zero is zero and anything multiplied by a negative is a negative. If you don't have clearly defined values, or worse, you don't live them, you have a toxic, deleterious culture.

Also, the equation is weighted by influence. The more senior you are in the organization the louder your whisper becomes. While every member of an organization contributes to culture through their behaviours, the more senior you are and influence you have the more impact you bear on the culture.

Instead of articulating values as meaningless nouns or adjectives, articulate them as verbs or action phrases. We cannot do a noun or adjective, we can only do a verb. Let's transform Enron's values, shall we?

• Treat people like the human beings they are (Respect)
• Say and do the right thing, especially if it's hard and no one is looking (Integrity)
• Communicate clearly, consistently and often (Communication)
• Do great work (Excellence)

Side note: to me, "Excellence" leads the list of meaningless values.

At least as verbs and action phrases, Enron's values are easier to act upon, reward and recognize in others or as a basis to provide feedback, coaching or discipline if people live outside of them.

Values are the actions and behaviours you take to operate at your best and aligned with your beliefs. Living your values is the antidote to combating the 5 pitfalls outlined at the beginning of this article.

Inspired by your purpose, if you pursue your vision and accomplish missions along the way in a manner that is outside of your values, simply put, that's a problem. You may lose the will and resources to stay in the game and keep going. How you perform – meaning your values in action and behaved, or not – is more important in the long term than your performance. If you run the marathon by cheating, it will catch up with you. If you tolerate and reward behaviour that is outside of your values, you may just become the next Enron. Oh my!