Why Mission Clarity Gives You Freedom

Personally, I resist putting a stake in the ground. I hate being forced to commit to things too far in advance. Planning holiday travel for my family—something that must be done months in advance—is pure torture to me. I like to keep my options open. I am, in Myers-Briggs parlance, a true “P” who doesn’t like to be nailed down. But when it comes to building and leading organizations, I LOVE mission clarity.

Why?

Mission clarity is a stake in the ground. It anchors your organization. It gives you something to navigate toward. It can be quite a long, arduous process to arrive a sufficient clarity to put the stake in the ground. But, once it’s there, I find that it creates incredible freedom in the organization.

How?

If you do a good job of defining your mission in terms of the people (or things) that you want to impact and what impact you want to achieve, it frees you to innovate with purpose and embrace learning. You are no longer tethered to a specific approach, methodology or program. Yes, you may have significant human, intellectual, and physical resources invested in operating specific programs. These should not be cast aside lightly. But, by unbundling your identity from the “how” or a particular solution, you can explore new ways to create impact that may build upon or eventually supersede the current approaches. That freedom can keep your organization on the cutting edge of impact, ever growing and evolving.

Making Mission Clarity Work for You

To make mission clarity work for you in this way, you need a clearly articulated, evidence-informed theory of change, a monitoring system with meaningful indicators, and a commitment to continually assess programs’ contribution to impact and revise as needed. The theory of change should not be static. Instead, it should be treated as a hypothesis that is continually tested and revisited as new internal and external evidence emerges. The theory of change should outline the pathway or pathways that your organization uses to create the impact specified in the mission. This pathway needs indicators that can serve as signposts that you are on track to create impact. All existing programs and new ideas should be assessed for their contribution to the impact pathway outlined in the theory of change. Finally, you need to begin to build a culture where failure to achieve impact is not viewed as failure at all. Instead, it is viewed as a catalyst to investigate, learn, and improve.

I’ll be exploring these topics in greater depth over the coming months in my blog. If you’d like to join the conversation, please subscribe to my blog. I’d love to hear your thoughts!