Back to Blog
February 26, 2019
Written by Juan Francisco Lecaros
I would like to recommend that you keep in mind these ten formal requirements so that you have an attractive mission, both for those invited and for your own team:
1. Avoid the obvious
The Mission is not written by a lawyer. Nor should you be guided by duties or guilty consciences for inspiration. You will write better missions as time goes by and you will discover what you truly give and the beauty that lies in it. Then you will write phrases that resonate deeply and say what you truly provoke in the beneficiary. Until then, try to avoid the obvious, the commonplaces, what everyone says and no one remembers.
The mission has a deep accent. If your love and sweat are not put into it, it is not a good mission. Squeeze it; feel it as your own; let it not “come from outside”; let it find enormous meaning in you. This is the first commandment of good missions.
2. The Mission is about doing! It does not say what you are or what you think
The “Mission has a Mission”: to clearly state what we do. From the Mission, we will see, will be derived the services we will provide, the volunteers we will call upon, the funds we will raise. The Mission indicates actions; it is not an ideology nor the place to publish who you are. Whoever reads the Mission must know for sure what it is that you do and offer.
3. Let the Mission be tailored to you
The good you can do is necessarily limited. There is nothing more damaging to the organization - and we would also say to the spirit - than being overwhelmed by the evil in the world and in our beneficiary. Between being able, wanting and having to, stick to the former: do what you can and live happily! Yes, have a mission and an organization that suits you. Work with joy and without losing your sense of humor. Don't pretend to be an Atlas12; the world definitely does not rest on your shoulders.
4. But be careful; the Mission does not depend on the whim of the boss
Just because it's tailored to you doesn't mean it's the one you, as a boss, want. Be wary of sudden inspirations and such things. The Mission is a "bump" in time rather than an illumination.
5. Let your Mission call
There are no good or bad missions. There are missions that do not att philippines business mailing list ract people, or that do not succeed in attracting them. It will not be a good mission when it is not capable of attracting people, when we do not succeed in enthusing society about what we do. Many times the appeal of our mission fails not because it is “boring” but because we do not polish it; we do not publicize it; we do not make it available to society.
Hopefully, in no more than two or three sentences, so that we know it by heart and repeat it with pride. This requirement of being brief will force us to focus only on the essentials of our desire. A dynamic institution dedicated to the environment had the following mission: "To contribute to the strengthening of civil society through education and the promotion of initiatives aimed at promoting the individual responsibility of the actors in order to reconcile the protection of the environment with economic growth and social equity."
Did you understand? The definition may be correct in terms of what the institution wants to be, but it is certainly difficult to convey. Surely, to understand it, you should have read it twice. Don't fall into that mistake yourself. You will only have one chance to say it: don't make them repeat it.
7. That it is “macerated by experience”
Missions sometimes proclaim things that are not given. It is not that we are deceiving our beneficiary; what happens is that we do not evaluate with all severity what we are really giving to the beneficiary. Just as we say that services must be derived from the Mission, the reverse is also true; that is, the Mission must be the profound distillation of our services. The experience of what we give must inspire the Mission.
8. Let it be a nice and sonorous phrase
Use poetry! Have fun looking for the verbs that most beautifully reflect your Mission. Do not be afraid to use words or images full of poetry. The Mission is not a cold definition, but something vital, capable of mobilizing all those who have to do with it: the officials, the beneficiaries, the supporters.
9. Make them proud!
Every volunteer or employee who works in the organization should not only know the Mission, but should recite it. They should repeat it with pride because it is beautiful, accurate and original. Yes, it must have these three characteristics if we really want it to be a source of pride.
10. Review the Mission periodically
Ignore this recommendation when you are thinking about your Mission. Strictly speaking, imagine it as a project for the next thousand years, but then, when four or five years have passed, think about it again for the next thousand. We know the case of an institution that was dedicated to child malnutrition and that had to face during the 80s and 90s, an undeniable fact: the extraordinary decrease of this scourge in Chile. We are not suggesting that given this precedent, the institution should be dissolved, but rather that it is advisable to rethink the mission in light of the new precedent. (Curiously, along with the decrease in malnutrition, its counterpart, child obesity, increased; we are not sure that one and the other phenomenon are, of course, of the same severity). There are certain moments when we must speak, not of renewing the Mission, but, plain and simple, of refounding the institution. In these cases, it is worth starting by asking ourselves about our vocation: step No. 1.