Almost every organization has a mission statement of some sort. Sadly, many of these statements have little to do with what is actually measured, rewarded, or valued. They don’t describe reality. They spout clichés and marketing slogans.

That’s a shame, because an honest, clear, and concise mission statement can be one of innovation’s most potent accelerators. But the kind of mission statement that keeps an organization focused and accelerates innovation doesn’t just happen. It takes careful thought and honest reflection. It’s more than plastering a cool slogan on a website or passing out new business cards.

To make a difference, a mission statement must have three essential traits. It must be ruthlessly honest, widely known, and broadly accepted. Each of these traits is absolutely critical. If your mission statement is missing any one of them, you’ll have a three-legged stool with only two legs. No one can sit on it without falling over.

So let’s take a careful look at each of these characteristics to learn why they’re so important to innovation, and what we can do to ensure they’re incorporated into our mission statements.

RUTHLESSLY HONEST

First, to be useful, a mission statement must be ruthlessly honest. It should reflect your organization’s passionate pursuit, not merely your wishful thinking, your marketing slogans, or a spirit of political correctness. Anything less is disingenuous. And worthless.

It doesn’t take long for people inside and outside an organization to recognize what the real priorities are. If your mission statement says one thing, but all of your decisions and actions pursue something else, the predictable result will be cynicism and confusion.

For instance, when a church claims to be “Proclaiming the Gospel to Everyone, Everywhere,” but all of its programs serve its members and every tough decision errs on the side of keeping them comfortable and happy, you know that’s not an honest mission statement. It’s a wishful-thinking statement.

When a business claims to be “Providing World Class Service to All of Our Valued Customers,” but acts like the DMV, that’s not a mission statement. It’s an indictment.

The same is true for the university that claims to be “Educating the Minds and Shaping the Character of Tomorrow’s Leaders,” but all of its polices are designed to protect the interests of tenured faculty and wealthy donors. It doesn’t have an honest mission statement. It has an empty slogan.

It’s what we actually do that matters. At the end of the day, organizations are just like people. They aren’t what they want to be; they’re what they are — the sum of the priorities they live by and the choices they make.

Yet despite the fact that no one wants to produce cynicism and confusion, it’s no secret that many (if not most) mission statements fall short of being ruthlessly honest.

Why is that?

There are two primary culprits.

Confusing Mission with Marketing

Many leadership teams confuse mission with marketing. They fail to understand the difference between the two. Their mission statements sound like they come out of the marketing department.

A mission statement should be aimed at insiders. Its purpose is to tell those on the inside of the organization where the bull’s-eye lies. It’s fine for outsiders to hear the statement and know it. It’s fair for them to use it as a benchmark, to measure how well the organization is doing. But ultimately, the purpose of a mission statement is to tell everyone on the inside what we’re aiming at. It’s supposed to let them know what’s most important.

Marketing is different. It’s aimed at outsiders. Its purpose is to convince them to check us out, buy what we sell, or trust us more than our competitors.

When a mission statement morphs into a marketing slogan, it loses power. It becomes a declaration of what we want others to think about us rather than a forceful and honest articulation of what we’re passionate about. It obscures the bull’s-eye, rather than highlighting it.

Vision by Committee

Another enemy of the honest mission statement is “vision by committee.” The more people you involve in the process of creating your mission statement, the more likely it is that you’ll end up with a convoluted list of politically correct priorities designed to assuage the sensibilities of everyone involved. It will lack the precision of laserlike vision and the clarity that you need to define your mission.

This is a far bigger problem in the nonprofit world than in the business world. That’s because churches, community organizations, colleges, and other nonprofits often function like quasi democracies.

I know of a church whose mission statement includes nearly everything a church could possibly do. It speaks of evangelism, discipleship, world missions, compassion, community impact, education, contextualizing the gospel, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember. It’s so long the pastor and the church leaders can’t remember it either.

No wonder the church has long floundered. When everything is important, nothing is important.

And I know exactly how this happened. I don’t have to ask.

At some point, the church formed a task force or a committee to come up with a revamped mission statement. Anything someone thought was remotely important was included (as well as anything someone thought someone else might think was important). No one had the guts (or authority) to speak up and say, “Hey, that might be a good thing, but it’s not what we’re really passionate about.” Political correctness and the desire to honor everyone present wouldn’t allow any cuts to be made.

I understand. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the guy to speak up and label myself as being against the priorities on their long list. My bet is you wouldn’t want to be that guy either.

Which is why vision by committee never works. Instead of producing an honest statement of passion and priorities, it inevitably results in a sanitized and inclusive statement that is more concerned with maintaining harmony than describing reality.

The vision by committee process may cause more of your people to feel involved. It may sidestep conflicts. But it won’t clarify the vision, prioritize actions, or help accelerate the innovation process. And in the end, this means that it won’t help you fulfill your mission and calling.

WIDELY KNOWN

A second trait of a powerful mission statement is that it’s widely known. Even if it’s ruthlessly honest and laser focused, if it’s too wordy and complex to remember, it’s pretty much useless. To impact the daily decisions of an organization, a mission statement must be easily remembered and repeated ad nauseam — and then repeated again.

When a mission statement is so complex and wordy that no one remembers what it says without stopping to reread it, there’s not much chance that daily decisions will be made in light of it or even align with it. Too long to remember is too long to be useful.

Not long ago I came across the mission statement of a prestigious college. It was five paragraphs long. I guarantee you that nobody (even the president) can recite it from memory. And while a five-paragraph mission statement is obviously an extreme example, I find that many statements that are far shorter are still too long and complex to be easily remembered (and thus widely known). Even some shorter statements suffer because they are awkwardly worded and badly in need of some wordsmithing to make them more memorable.

Here’s a simple test. If your mission statement is too wordy or complex for everyone on your team to remember it without looking it up, it can’t bring clarity and focus to their daily decisions. And without a clear understanding of where the bull’s-eye lies, there’s no way for you or those on your team to know which ideas or innovations have the potential to take you closer to your goal and which ones are merely great ideas that are likely to sidetrack the pursuit of your goals.

Even a pithy and well-worded mission statement needs to be repeated ad nauseam if it’s going to be widely known. Unless your team is static and never adds anyone new to the mix, you’ll have to risk boring some of the old-timers to make sure the newbies get it.

Since most leaders hate to bore anyone (or worse, be mocked behind their backs), they fail to turn their mission statement into a worn-out mantra. They look around the room and see the team members who have been there forever, and wrongly assume that everyone has heard it enough.

But a great mission statement is like an old saying your dad or your favorite mentor used to say until you were sick of hearing it. Yet now you find yourself using that same saying to guide your life decisions, and you catch yourself passing it on to your own children so often that they too are sick of hearing it.

If you know your mission, make sure it’s clearly worded. Then say it, print it, and post it every chance you get. And then do it some more.

BROADLY ACCEPTED

The last trait of a great mission statement is that it’s broadly accepted.

There’s an old adage that “the policies down the hall always trump the vision on the wall.” It’s true. Pockets of people or departments within an organization that don’t fully buy into the mission, or worse, have a different mission, create confusion and conflict. They also tend to sabotage innovation because their infighting and turf protection inevitably amplifies the natural resistance that most people and organizations have toward change.

In the early days of a church plant or startup, it’s easy to gain broad acceptance of your mission. If it’s genuine and clearly stated, you’ll attract people who agree with it and you will repel those who don’t. That’s why so many startup teams have a Camelot-like sense of unity.

But it’s difficult to maintain that sense of unity and broad acceptance of the mission over time. As organizations grow and mature, there’s almost always some measure of mission creep. It’s inevitable. New staff and new leaders subtly redefine the mission in terms of their personal perspectives and preferences or the position they have within the organization. And those subtle shifts add up. Eventually, many organizations end up with competing silos, each with a slightly different agenda, and each one duking it out with the others for power, prestige, and resources.

The only way to avoid this is if someone has the authority and guts to step up and periodically recalibrate the vision or realign the organization and its structures with the vision. That’s easier said than done. Any attempt at realignment will cause those who are out of alignment to lose some (or all) of their power and prestige. Most people won’t give these up easily. Some will fight you to the death.

It’s here that an honest and widely known mission statement comes to the rescue. It smokes out those who have a different target. When your bull’s-eye is clearly marked and widely known, there’s no way for those who insist on aiming at something different to hide. It’s obvious to all when they have a different target and a different agenda.

Imagine for a moment that you are a world-class mountain climber. There are lots of challenging and worthy peaks you could choose from. But an expedition can ascend only one peak at a time. To make it to the top, everyone has to agree that this is the peak we’re climbing. If someone wants to scale another peak, they need to move on or be left behind.

And it’s not only the selection of the mountain peak that demands agreement. You’ll also have to agree on the route. There are multiple routes to the top of most mountains. But an expedition has to choose one route and stick to it. There’s no room for someone on the team to decide that another route is safer, faster, or easier. To do so would put the whole expedition at risk.

It’s the same for a ministry, nonprofit, or business. Those with a different vision need to move on, be left behind, or be asked to leave. This doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It simply means they’re wrong for this team.

The same holds true for those who agree with the vision but want to take a different route. They also need to move on, be left behind, or be asked to leave.

Difficult missions demand laserlike focus. Everyone must agree on the peak you’re ascending and the route you’re taking. Otherwise you’ll have little to no chance of success.

WHY A GREAT MISSION STATEMENT ACCELERATES INNOVATION

When your mission statement is an honest reflection of your passion, is widely known, and is broadly accepted, it will not only help you get where you want to go; it will accelerate innovation. That’s because when you have an obvious goal, it becomes clear which ideas and innovations will help propel you toward that goal and which are merely great ideas that won’t impact your goal and mission in any significant way.

In other words, a clear and memorable mission statement will tell you what to feed and what to starve, what to focus on and what to ignore. It will give you a framework by which to judge success and failure.

Without missional clarity, it’s easy to be seduced by every innovative idea or proposal that appears. Especially if something is novel, has been successful elsewhere, or promises to make a solid short-term profit. But over the long haul, if something doesn’t take us toward our mission, it takes us away from our mission, even if it’s a great idea and a potential game-changing innovation elsewhere.

It’s hard to hit the bull’s-eye when it’s a moving target or when everyone thinks it’s a different target or when no one knows for sure what the target is. But thankfully, that ceases to be a problem when your goal — your mission statement — is ruthlessly honest, widely known, and broadly accepted.

So here’s an exercise to help you and your team evaluate your mission statement (assuming you have one) in terms of its honesty, breadth of awareness, and level of acceptance.

Write down your mission statement. Now answer the following questions individually, then as a group:

Is this an honest reflection of our genuine passions?
Does it include anything that reflects political correctness more than honest passion?
Is our mission statement simple enough to be easily remembered?
Can our leadership team quote it without looking it up?
Can our staff, members, or customers quote it without looking it up?
Is our mission statement broadly accepted throughout the organization?
Do we have any policies in place that run counter to our mission? List them.
Are there any key players or departments that have a different mission or that don’t buy into our mission? What are the “elephants in the room”?
What (if anything) do we need to change to make our mission statement more ruthlessly honest, widely known, or broadly accepted?

Chapter 7

WHY MISSION STATEMENTS MATTER

How Clarity Accelerates Innovation