Purpose Leads to Mission

Once purpose is determined, mission can be identified. Purpose is an umbrella; mission is what the umbrella is to cover. Mission must flow from purpose or it cannot be sustained. There must be congruence between the two. When one gives up on a mission and says, "My heart was not in it," that person speaks greater truth than they realize.

Mission is related, also, to addressing the environment--social, physical, geographic, economic, etc. If the purpose of a fictional organization, "Teaching Life Skills, Inc." is to help children improve their lives by teaching them life skills, the mission should be determined by considering the world around the organization and asking questions like: "What identifies children who can best benefit from being taught life skills?" "What life skills education is lacking among children?" "Why do some children lack knowledge of life skills?" "What number of children can we effectively teach life skills to?" "Do these children think they lack life skills and, if so, what life skills do these children believe they lack?"  In other words, identify an actual need in the target market. No organization is large enough to meet every need of every person. Limiting the organization's mission is a good way to manage the size, focus, and programming of the organization. This organization's mission might be, "To teach household management skills to adolescent boys ages 11 through 14 in the ___ neighborhood of [our town]."

A more commonly seen approach is backwards from this one. Will, Bill and Phil, local business owners, perceive that many neighborhood children seem to be hanging out and doing nothing productive. The children do not demonstrate [what our trio consider to be] proper respect for adults or for property of others, or to possess proper manners, or to be motivated to make themselves "better" people. They decide these children lack these kinds of life skills, it is important that they should possess them, and that Will, Bill and Phil can and should develop a program and begin an organization to teach these life skills to these children. They adopt a mission statement, "Making youth better through life skill training."  They develop a "life skills for boys" program, advertise it, and open the doors at the appointed time and place. A few young people show up, but fewer each week. After the fourth week the program closes and our trio say, "We gave up. Our hearts were just not in it."

The failure of this trio's project may have a hundred different causes, but one thing is clear: Will and company did not ask the right questions before developing the program. The first of those "right questions" would have been, "What is our purpose?" It is not clear, from the facts given, what their purpose might have been. It could have just been that, as business owners, they wanted to reduce loitering. It could have been that they believed every person should conform to some minimal standard in public settings; because these children did not, there must be some deficit that needed to be fixed. It could have been they were filling some need they had to feel superior to the neighborhood kids. It could be they did not like children at but felt societal pressure to "try to help these kids."

This story would be much different if Will and company had compassion for these children and, in interacting with them, learned that the children themselves felt a need to learn particular things about life so they could better manage their own lives. The Will and company purpose would have been to help these children for whom they had compassion. They would then have asked what these children needed, and fashioned a mission in response.

Mission follows purpose. If no purpose is identified, then there is nothing to which the mission is tied and it can drift, be ineffective, and ultimately fail.