Mission Statements are often ridiculed and discounted by the very people they are designed for.
Their intention appears positive yet they often seem ineffective and even counter-productive.
Why is that?
In essence the Mission Statement is a declaration of the organisations purpose and provides a context for the formulation of strategy. Very often they are ambiguous, emotive and sort of yingy-yangy. More marketing gimmick than management goal.
The output of Improvement Science is a system designed to deliver its value purpose. So a clear and realistic purpose is the first requirement for an effective system design.
For example:
Global Fast Food Inc – “To provide fast-food prepared in the same high-quality manner world-wide that is tasty, reasonably-priced and delivered consistently in a low-key décor and friendly atmosphere.”
This is a clear purpose specification – and it has all the Three Wins® design elements of quality, delivery and money. It is necessary but it is not yet sufficient.
What is missing?
First we need to be clear what a poor purpose statement design looks like. They contain the word “best”. They are poor designs because just using the word “best” makes them aspirations not specifications. Dreams rather than deliverables. Only one organisation can actually be “the best” so adopting impossible purpose condemns the majority of organisations to failure-to-achieve-their-purpose. And everyone in the organisation knows that. So they give up emotionally at the start. They know that achieving the stated purpose is impossible.
Not having a Statement of Purpose (SoP) at all is even worse because the message this broadcasts is that the organisation cannot articulate its purpose – its reason for existing – where it derives its sense of value and worth. Purposeless organisations are chaotic and demotivating places to work in because the emotional vacuum is filled with something much more toxic – organisational politics.
So we do need some form of Statement of Purpose and one reason that the what-we-will-do design feels incomplete is because it only covers a quarter of the requirements for a system purpose specification. And it is the missing three-quarters that causes the problems. They are difficult to articulate but we can feel the gap that we cannot see.
A statement of purpose is a cultural contract – is operates at the people and psychological level – not at the legal level. It is a collective pledge. It is a statement of expectation.
So when observed behaviour falls short of expected behaviour then disappointment and anger results. After that comes sadness – for the loss of hope – then fear of what the failure implies and what will come next. Fear of the rhetoric-reality mismatch; the small white lies that feed on fear and grow into the big fat porkie-pies; the secrecy and hoarding of knowledge; the hidden agendas; and the behind-closed door wheeling and dealing; the fait accomplis and the handed down JFDI Policies. All untrustworthy behaviours. And all blindingly obvious to everyone. Trust is eroded, optimism turns to skepticism and then cynicism. The toxic emotional swamp deepens. Who would want to invest their lifetime there? The savvy sensitive ones escape. The emotionally thick-skinned species of employee survive. A few noisy idealists may stay out of a misplaced sense of loyality but usually even they fall silent as the toxic swamp overwhelmes them. Not a very rosy picture is it?
So what does a full Statement of Purpose look like?
Firstly there are two Acts:
1. The Acts of Commission – the things that we say we will commit to do.
2. The Acts of Omission – the things that we say we will commit NOT to do.
Both are required.
These are made explicit using a Pledge. The pledge is the output if a formal design exercise – like a blueprint.
Secondly there are the two Defences against Errors. These are made explicit using a Plan. It too requires design.
When we fail to deliver on our commitments as individuals (and we all do because we are all human) then we make two different types of error. I- the Error of Commission or II – the Error of Omission.
The Error of Commission is when we do the wrong thing (or we try to do the right thing but do it wrong). The first is failure of efficacy the second is failure of effectiveness. So first we need to be able to decide what is the right thing and then we need the capability to deliver it right. For that we need to know what to do and how to do it. We need both knowledge and understanding. We need to know what and why.
Errors erode trust. And one of the commonest errors of commission is to assume ineffectiveness (or inefficiency) when the actual cause is poor strategic decisions. The effect of this error is to add more and more bureaucracy. Checking that we have done what we should and done it right. Inspection-and-Correction, Supervision-and-Surveillance, Audits-and-Reports. Waiting for a failure and then sniffing like hounds up the trail of spilt blood and breadcrumbs. Right back to the individual who committed the sinof commission and then to expose and punish them. To weed out the bad apples in the barrel. Bureaucracy is not the solution – it is the symptom of poor strategic decisions.
And some people are naturally drawn to the Inspection, Supervision and Protection roles – the ISP functions – because their temperaments are suited to it. And that is OK so long as the Purpose is valid. When the Purpose is invalid the ISP army will enforce an ineffective strategic plan and the problem will be magnified. Invalid purposes are a symptom of a lack of collective strategic wisdom – which is why the design of the Statement of Purpose is critical to long term success.
The world is always changing – so even when the Purpose is valid and does not change – what was a well designed Policy a decade ago may easily be a poor design of Policy now. But the role of the Inspectors, Supervisors and Protectors is to maintain stability – and that is good. We need that. The danger comes silently and slowly as the Reality changes and the Rhetoric does not. The ISP army grows, the bureaucracy and bullying grows, and the costs escalate. The mismatch is exposed eventually – there is a crisis – often of catastrophic proportions. The longer the delay the bigger the catastrophe. And the bigger the catastrophe the more people get caught in the cross-fire.
So the fourth part is the Defence against Errors of Omission.
An Error of Omission is when we do not do something that we should have. When we did not say “That is not OK” when we could clearly see that something was not OK. The Error of Omission is the more dangerous error because it is invisible. There is nothing to see. There is no blood or breadcrumb trail for the faithful hounds to follow. There is no evidence trail leading to the bad outcome so the hounds follow any trail that they find and either scapegoat the wrong person or go around in circles and eventually conclude “it was a system problem”. They are correct. It is. A system design problem.
The individual errors of omission are bad enough – the collective errors of omission are worse.
And they are driven by two forces. Ignorance and Fear.
160 years ago in Vienna the doctors did not know that not washing their hands when entering the labour ward was an Error of Omission. They were ignorant of the fact. And as a result hundreds of young women and their new babies died of Childbed Fever. The people knew this and it is said that husbands would rather their wives give birth on the street than go to hospital when the doctors were on duty for the day. At its worse the death rate was 30% per month! Now we do know that to not disinfect our hands between patients is an error of omission and we understand the reason – we understand how we unintentionally spread invisible germs on our hands.
Knowledge is the antidote to ignorance and knowledge needs to be shared to be effective – because we are all ignorant until educated. And we are ignorant of our ignorance. We do not now what we do not know. Tackling our ignorance requires humility. The willingness to expose our own knowledge gaps. The willingness to learn – continuously – because reality is always evolving.
The more usual driver of the collective error of omission is fear. Fear of persecution if we break ranks and make ourselves conspicuous by saying “This is not OK”. And the people who perscute us the most are our peers. Their collective fear of their own failures of purpose creates a much greater emotional barrier than the fear of an autocratic ISP bully. We also fear the mob. The dangerously unpredictable blinded-by-anger mob that becomes collectively enraged by their loss of trust and who stone-to-death anything that resembles the threat.
We fear and we turn away so we cannot see; we cover our ears so we cannot hear; and we say and do nothing. That is the Collective Error of Omission.
What then is the way forward?
Fill in the missing pieces.
Ensure that our Statement of Purpose has Four Parts.
1. What we will do and why. The Intended Acts of Commission.
2. What we will not do and why. The Intended Acts of Omission.
3. How we will know we have made an Error of Commission. The Defence against Type I Errors.
4. How we will know we have made an Error of Omission. The Defence against Type II Errors.
The Acts are designs for Trust, the Defences are designs for Feedback – the two essential components of an effective value system design.