Mission is an idea that gets short shrift. Leaders want to talk about the important things, like execution, accountability, and profit.
But when it comes to mission, they risk mistaking it for cheerleading.
Cheerleading as a means of providing moments of uplift and excitement has its place. But what I’m talking about is communication of mission as a means of generating alignment amongst your team. Alignment is when everybody in the organization understands the destination so they can best contribute to the journey. Without alignment, execution becomes arbitrary and accountability doesn’t even begin (more on that coming soon).
But at the most profound level, is this all we want from our people? Is “Compliance! Accountability! Profit!” the rallying cry you imagine delivering to your teams at the annual strategy offsite?
Maybe you’re a founder/CEO, maybe you bought a business that you run, or maybe you’re a senior leader in an established business. I believe what you really want from your people is investment. Sacrifice.
Execution and accountability are table stakes–permission to play. Investment and sacrifice are what drive people to play a bigger game.
Once I heard a sales executive say, boastfully, “Sales is where the money comes from.” As if to imply that all of the other functions serve sales.
A client service exec responded by saying, “Client service is where the reputation comes from.”
I’d like to think that if the CEO had been there, he would have said, “Mission is where the investment and sacrifice come from.”
At IGW we define leadership as the uniquely human energy that unlocks the will inside of others to actualize a worthy outcome. Mission is the emotional fuel that drives that will.
It’s what drives people to sacrifice in the service of execution, and to take ownership in the service of accountability, both of which, market forces and acts of God being equal, increase the odds of best-in-class profitability.
IGW is currently working with the senior leadership team of a $3 million educational non-profit. One of my favorite aspects of working with this organization is that they have extraordinary clarity of mission: “We take high-school boys that conventional schools have discarded and grow them into confident young men with life skills, on a trajectory of life-long spiritual growth.”
Recently a non-educational staff member told the Executive Director that, “Building confidence in the boys is not my job.” The Executive Director responded by reminding this staff member of the mission. If you’re working at that institution, no matter what the position, building confidence in the boys may not be your direct responsibility, but it is always your mission.
There is a famous story about President Kennedy visiting NASA in 1962. He encounters a janitor carrying a broom and asks, “What do you do here?” The man replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr. President.”
Dear God I hope that story is true.
Not all of us are running companies to settle the moon’s surface. Or saving the whales. Or curing cancer.
But if you don’t carry inside of you the belief that what your company does is more than spittin’ out widgets, that what your company does isn’t just execution, but also a calling, a mission, how can you expect the people who work with you to carry it?
If you are not emotionally invested, what reason can you give them to be?
The leader is the person who shines light on the path, so everyone else can see where they’re going.
One of the most powerful lights we can shine as leaders is mission. It doesn’t have to be a social mission like my client described above. But if you fail to find a way to tap an emotional response in your people, you risk capping their contribution at execution and accountability.
Wouldn’t you rather tap investment and sacrifice?
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