Mission, Vision and Values: Has Your North Star earned it’s own webpage?

Mission. Vision. Values.

These are clearly important right? They’re everywhere and almost certainly on your ‘about us’ page – but do you know why? I was surprised to learn that these are relatively young concepts. Peter Drucker started to write about ‘mission’ in mid 1970s, an idea that only really took off in the 80s. Drucker would say “a business is not defined by its name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by the business mission. Only a clear definition of the mission and purpose of the organization makes possible clear and realistic objectives.”

Today it feels like a rule of law that every organization needs a mission, vision, and values statement. Indeed, organizations often spend considerable resources making sure they have the right ones (by the way cedar courage consulting is available to help you find yours!). Organizations do this for good reason! Revisiting your mission, vision, and values as an organization is an incredibly valuable self-reflection and growth opportunity - but only if done right. The greatest error I see is leaders turning these opportunities into a check-box exercise.

Sophisticated organizations (such as hospitals) can make a check box exercise feel big, bold, and exciting. But when it comes to Mission, Vision and Values, success can’t be measured by the breadth of media coverage or social engagement metrics. True success will be measured in 3-5+ years asking: Can your funders and the community you serve articulate your mission just by watching you perform? Do your Boad and executive teams evaluate strategy against your vision before making decisions? Does your frontline staff embody your values? And do you routinely evaluate how you perform against these three statements, the statements so important they get a full page onto themselves on your website?

Simon Sinek’s infinite game helps frame the importance of getting these right Simon Sinek - The Infinite Game - YouTube – Finite games have winners or losers. Infinite games are about perpetuating the game. Noone wins healthcare – so why do our KPIs often reflect finite mindsets and act like we do? When evaluating how well we’ve done creating our Mission, Vision, and Values, our KPIs need to reflect an infinite mindset. We cannot be focused on ‘winning’ healthcare, we need to focus on creating health services that are agile, patient focused, resilient, and inspired by and for tomorrow. This is objectively harder, but worth it.

When building a new clinical model of care at CHEO a member of the intake team would ask “Should we do X for this client?” and I replied “While X solves a problem for today, it sets up a systems problem that binds our hands in 3 years time reducing how we can help all the families who need us. We owe it to our clients to build a resilient service that can still meet their needs in 10+ years. We owe it to families to build a system that works, and that lasts – because they deserve it.”  This was my north star statement. It defined our shared purpose without limiting staff agility and creativity. I was lucky because I worked for an infinite minded organization with a stated value of “Innovation and challenging the status quo.” (side note - CHEO is awesome employer!)

Shared purpose is a North Star - this idea first popped onto my radar after reading a Helen Bevan article. (second side note - if you can afford to hire Helen instead of me please do so and invite me to watch!). Here’s a taste: Creating tomorrow today: seven simple rules for leaders by Helen Bevan and Goran Henriks – The official blog of BMJ Leader Without defining share purpose we are asking teams to navigate in the dark. An organization’s share purpose - our north star, is anchored in our Mission, Vision, and Values and should be baked into our organizational muscle memory.

Creating Mission, Vision, and Values statements are a powerful co-creation opportunity to engage key partners (internal and external) who are impacted by your organization. The actual process is a great deal of fun and can be very inspiring. The individuals in attendance should represent your Board, staff (from Senior leaders to managers and I encourage frontline reps. too), community members, and organizational partners. With an infinite mindset we know that the community members, politicians, staff, even the CEO will change over time. If we want these partners (not just the individuals present) to co-create, co-own, and become champions of these guiding principles the work of communication and engagement cannot be over after a celebration and a 6-month long comms campaign. We must continuously engage with these partners (especially the internal ones) and communicate our shared purpose loudly and often to ensure continuous co-ownership. We must ensure our leadership teams, managers, and frontline staff especially share these values and use them to guide decision making. We must evaluate our performance against them annually, and we must revisit them if ever we notice drift.

If we don’t do the above, has our north star really earned it’s own page on our website?

What do you think? Agree, Disagree? Let’s start a conversation!