Motivation and Mission Statements. I believe that the first step in answering the important question above is to get to the bottom of the motivation for creating Mission Statements - and why that motivation for “Mission Creation” rarely translates into “Mission Fulfillment.” Numerous scientific studies show that motivation is often associated with being aware of the rewards of doing something or the costs of failing to do it. The rewards of completing a Mission Statement are obvious and immediate; developing these statements are a great way to get fired up over what we would like to do in the future.

What is sometimes not as apparent (until it is to late) is the often huge price of failing to live our Mission Statements. From wasted money and time to decreased morale and increased cynicism, the effects of being out of alignment with our Missions are far-reaching. For example, many believe that today’s economic situation is just one (major) example of the result of this mis-alignment. How can we stop wasting so much of our precious resources on unfulfilled Mission Statements? After years of research and countless conversations with my colleagues, clients, and other experts in the field, I believe we may have come to a very important answer to this critical question. The reason why so many Mission Statements often wind up wasting valuable resources is that most Missions are not “Activated.”

What is Mission Activation? An Activated Mission Statement (or Vision/Values statement, for that matter) is a statement that has been broken down into the key components that help ensure that day-to-day activity will be aligned with the statement - even during frantic and uncertain times (which are inevitable from time to time, as most people are well aware). Our experience and research over the past decade have revealed some very simple and powerful steps that people can take in order to ensure that their Mission Statements will stay Activated throughout the entire year. I’ve personally seen these steps help teams and individuals of all kinds become strongly aligned with their missions - with powerful, long-lasting, incredibly fulfilling results.

How can you Activate your Mission? For those who would like to know more about Mission Activation, below are listed what we have found to be the 6 steps toward Activating a Mission. As we were identifying these components, we realized that Activating a Mission was very similar to the process of growing a strong, solid, flexible tree. So, we came up with the term “Excellence Tree” to help get these ideas across; a well-maintained Excellence Tree results in a strongly Activated Mission. The Mission Activation steps listed below include thoughts on how each step is related to growing an Excellence Tree:

1. Check The Soil: Assess current levels of (and potential for) Mission Activation.
2. Plant & Water Your Tree - Then Regularly Observe its Growth: Strongly align daily activity with the Mission or Vision Statement in clear ways. Then, promote execution by incorporating a communication technology that can allow all stakeholders to view progress in quick, easy ways.
3. Identify & Pull Weeds: Identify barriers to
   Mission Activation - and quickly create SMART Solutions to overcome them.
4. Prune Your Tree: Break “Mission-Deactivating Silos” by tracking (and rewarding) consensus and cooperation.
5. Provide Adequate Sunlight: Implement a Mission Activation Reward System (a system that truly increases and maintains Mission-aligned activity).
6. Create Gardeners: Train others to help plant the tree, pull weeds, prune, and provide their own sunlight to the tree (the mission) across the entire year.

Click here for some brief descriptions of each Mission Activation step listed above - and some pointers on how to implement them to Activate your Mission.

What is the impact of an Activated Mission? Mission Activation takes time, energy, and attention - so why would busy people want to even consider doing this hard work (especially during these particularly tough times)? The short answer is that we have seen Mission Activation drastically change people’s businesses and lives (including our own) in tremendously positive ways! On the other hand, we have all seen (and felt) the incredibly negative effects of organizations and individuals that do not live their Mission Statements. In fact, many believe that these tough times can at least partially be described as a culmination of a lot of un-Activated Missions (more on that, later).

On the other hand, it has been our experience that the organizations, teams and individuals who commit to Mission Activation not only achieve their objectives in more quality ways, they also report feeling better about their lives as a whole. Another interesting effect of Mission Activation: many people associated with teams and individuals that have Activated their Mission Statements tend to want stay with them for long periods of time. People decline incentives like larger paychecks to continue to experience Mission-aligned cultures (what I sometimes refer to as a “Cultures of Sanity”) in a world that can sometimes seem very frenzied, unfair and cynical (and often very scary). Finally, I think Mission Activation also helps more people “get it,” as my colleague John Spence says - or, to truly understand what it takes to be successful and fulfilled over the long haul for more on “getting it,” click here.

If Mission Activation is so great, why are so few Missions actually Activated? This is a great question - and one that is constantly on my mind as I interact with hundreds of people a week who are pursuing their personal and professional goals. This question interested me so much that it was actually the topic of both my Masters Thesis and my Doctoral Dissertation while pursuing my Ph.D. What our research team found was that the difference between those who did things that they knew were good for them and those who simply “wished” they did these things came down to the 5 critical factors. Click here for more on why there is such a large gap between wishing and doing.

What is the cost of NOT Activating a Mission? Very often, a non-activated Mission Statement results in what I call “Frenzied Leadership” - leadership (including self-leadership) that often creates confusion and anxiety. Non Activated missions have other ramifications beyond Frenzied Leadership - including cynicism about the statement and the organization, team or individual that developed it. Change management guru Rick Maurer (and his blog’s visitors) express this cynicism quite effectively in his article entitled “Empty Words and Mission Statements”.

Some closing thoughts on Mission Activation. At our firm, we have observed some very stunning results associated with Mission Activation - from increased productivity and enhanced morale to decreased anxiety and lower levels of disengagement. Unfortunately, we have also found that very few Mission Statement are actually Activated - and the ramifications of this run broad and deep in our businesses, our society and our individual lives. I’ve personally seen Mission Activation solve many of the largest business, social, and personal problems facing us at this critical point in all of our lives. I hope this article will encourage more leaders and individuals to consider Mission Activation as a strategy for business and personal success.

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If this article was helpful to you, please feel free to comment on it below or forward it to someone who you think might be interested in it. You may also wish to visit our site and read more about Excellence Trees. I look forward to hearing from you!

Here are what we have found to be the 6 most important components of a powerfully ”Activated” Mission.  Since we believe that Mission Activation is so similar to the process of growing a strong tree, we often refer to the process of Mission Activation as growing an “Excellence Tree.”

1. “Check The Soil”: Assess current levels of (and potential for) Mission Activation. In order to Activate a Mission, it is often helpful to first get a sense of how many of the Mission Activation components listed below are working for (or against) teams and individuals.  There are many ways to assess the soil - some more valid than others.  We’ve found that the best way to assess current Mission Activation potential is by having team members to take part in a confidential online Mission Activation audit, “The CACE Assessment.” For individuals who are not a part of a team or group, we assess the soil on an more individual basis via The Self-Mastery Assessment.

2. “Plant Your Tree”: Strongly align daily activity with the Mission in clear ways. Consistent clarification of the most important initiatives, strategies or visions related to the Mission (what we at our firm call “Primary Objectives”) is another strong step toward Mission Activation.  Because it can be so easy to get confused about what to do during frenzied times (which are more and more frequent nowadays), Mission Activation demands that this clarification happen on a regular basis throughout the entire year.  In fact, we’ve found that regular clarification and prioritization is a strong antidote to frenzied times - the more clear everyone is about how they can contribute to their Missions in the most important ways, the less frenzied they are!

It has been our experience that the Planting of an Excellence Tree consists of 4 important phases.  When these phases are properly addressed, the Excellence Tree has been firmly planted in the soil - in the form of specific goals and objectives that are “rooted” in the Mission:

• Identification of clear, “Mission-aligned” Primary Objectives
• Prioritization of these Primary Objectives
• Creation and prioritization of “Objective-aligned” SMART Goals
• Distribution of these prioritized SMART Goals to the “right people”

Click here for some brief descriptions of each “Plant Your Tree” phase listed above.

3. “Identify & Pull Weeds”: Identify barriers to Mission Activation and quickly create “SMART Solutions” to overcome them. Weeds often grow near plants and can serve to compromise the growth of that plant by stealing nutrients from it.  Similarly, barriers to SMART Goal achievement inevitably emerge after a team “plants” it goals.  After developing and distributing Mission-aligned SMART Goals to the right people, it is essential to quickly identify and address these barriers regularly and efficiently - before they steal too much time, energy, and money (three “nutrients” that are essential to Mission Activation). ”SMART Solutions” are SMART Goals that help overcome barriers to achieving their originally-planted SMART Goals.  SMART Solutions allow leaders to quickly pull Mission-strangling weeds rather than waiting until the end of the quarter - or, even worse, the year - to do so.  Failure to identify these barriers and develop and track SMART Solutions can quickly deactivate a Mission by draining valuable resources from your Excellence Tree.  For information on how we help our clients identify and pull their weeds, click here.

4. “Prune Your Tree”: Break Mission-Deactivating Silos by tracking (and rewarding) consensus and cooperation. The first three steps above usually help team members begin working toward a more Activated Mission on an individual level.  However, team members also often depend on others to help them complete many of their SMART Goals in quality ways.  Unfortunately, “silos” often appear on the path to Mission Activation - individuals or groups that, for a variety of reasons, actually work against each other.   An Activated Mission demands that these silos be consistently identified and broken down.  We’ve found that there are 3 critical steps in the process of silo-busting:

• coming to a common definition of “quality”
• implementing processes that increase the probability that people will work together to deliver quality on a consistent basis
• consistently (not just a few times) clarifying how everyone benefits from other others’ successes

All of these steps help to “prune” silos from your Excellence Tree.  On the other hand, one of the best ways to actually strengthen silos is to encourage the belief that others’ success is not in another’s best interests - and many, many reward systems are set up to promote this silo-strengthening belief.  This can lead to some very dark times on the journey toward Mission Activation, which brings us to our next component: “Providing Adequate Sunlight.”

5. ”Provide Adequate Sunlight”: Implement a Mission Activation-Friendly reward system (a system that truly increases and maintains Mission-aligned activity). After working hard to align a team with its Mission Statement, we have found that all of this time and effort can go to waste without a consistently effective reward system.  Effectively rewarding Mission Activation is an absolute must in high performance teams - both to encourage success and to retain talented and effective employees.  To do this well, I believe it is necessary to return to the original (and so often misinterpreted) definition of a “reward”: something that actually increases desired behaviors after it is given out.  In today’s world, too many “reward systems” are not living up to that definition!

In fact, many reward systems actually reward behaviors that we would least like to see: low motivation, finger-pointing, confusion, frenzied activity, etc.  How do we know these reward systems do this?  The simple answer is: because these behaviors are so common.  I tell people all the time that you can tell what you system rewards by watching what behaviors occur most frequently.  Identifying and implementing effective rewards that are customized to powerfully impact every individual’s behavior on a regular basis is a necessity for Mission Activation.  We have found that when leaders are not seeing the Mission-aligned behaviors that they desire in their team members, an ineffective reward system is often a major reason for this.

6. ”Create Gardeners”: Train others to help plant the tree,  pull weeds, prune, and provide their own sunlight to the Excellence Tree throughout the entire year. Most people we know say that they have some people in their lives who seem “lazy” or “unmotivated” - no matter what they try to do to motivate them.  Although it seems true that some people are simply not interested in Mission Activation, we’ve found that this all-to-common problem can more often be explained by the fact that so many people have never been trained in the art of personal effectiveness.  Personally effective people are much more likely to be able to contribute to a Mission in powerful and meaningful ways.  We’ve found that training focused on the following skill sets often helps individuals to take accountability for their own Mission Activation levels:

1. Self-Mastery: the ability to strongly influence one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (including staying focused on what is most important, motivating oneself, and creating the time needed to get things done in quality ways).
2. Interpersonal Expertise: the ability to create uplifting, energizing relations with others (including communicating effectively with others, negotiating in win-win ways, and resolving conflict quickly and effectively).
3. Mission Connection: the ability to identify one’s areas of passion and excellence and use these areas to positively impact Mission Activation (in themselves and others).

For some more information on how our firm helps “Create Gardeners,” click here.

To return to the original Mission Activation article, click here.