Too often organizations express their mission in relatively mundane ways. The obvious example is the for-profit company that reminds employees that it objective is to make a profit for the stockholders. The unspoken implication is that short of success, employees will suffer layoffs should they fail. The relationship between profit and job tenure may motivate many out of fear, but it is hardly an expression of desired outcome that for most staff is a representation of excellence.

Not-for-profit or public corporations or no less immune from articulating less than challenging missions. One organization providing services to individuals with developmental disabilities merely restated its legal requirement to provide residential, vocational and employment opportunities for its customers. The mission statement suggested no level of excellence in throwing down the mantel to stakeholders. Several psychiatric centers still maintain a mission that in part challenges staff to provide clinical services in a non-traumatic environment, hardly a lofty ideal as one can imagine a vast range of outcomes between a traumatic environment and one which provides services in a safe, caring and hospitable one.

In essence, for the majority of stakeholders to believe that any organizational purpose is important, it needs to be expressed in laudable terms. Stakeholders must sense that beyond simply doing their job, there is a more sublime purpose to the work. For example, it would not be enough to inspire staff in human services agencies to avoid “abuse and neglect” of customers. Merely not doing the worst still could leave many or most individuals in unsafe and inhospitable locations.

At the same time the mission must be achievable. Creating a “zero defect” objective is so often seen by the majority of mere mortals as a exhortation to tilt at windmills.