Most “Mission Statements” are horrible. At some point in time, they may have made sense. Creating them probably sparked a good bit of conversation, but after they were put on a plaque, they started gathering dust and nobody gave them a second thought.
Business Made Simple University has an outstanding course on generating mission statements. In addition to inward-facing text, it also guides you through the process of creating:
- Key Characteristics – Personal attributes that are essential for people to have in order to embody the mission within the organization.
- Critical Actions – Concrete behaviors that anybody can perform that will move the company toward accomplishing the mission
- Your Story Pitch – How to represent your mission to the world (rather than just staff), and do it in a way that invites others to participate in your success.
- Your Theme – a short phrase that people can memorize that encapsulates the essence of why your company exists, without being full of jargon or fluff.
The Challenge
There’s no escaping that even the best process for creative contribution is fraught with clerical, logistical, coordination, and documentation challenges. Sure, you can get together and use sticky-notes and white-boards, but you still lose the good ideas that failed to make the cut, and somebody has to manage all of that paper.
Plus, in the age of Covid (when this was written), or where people are geographically spread out, online meetings can only take you so far. Shared documents help, especially the Google Apps suite that allows for concurrent access, but you still have to deal with cut-and-paste and challenges with how to organize an avalanche of ideas that lack structure.
The Solution
The first part of solving these problems is to hire a Business Made Simple Coach who will facilitate the process with you. The coach augments the video training material available through Business Made Simple University.
The second part of the solution is to use a structured Google worksheet to help organize all the relevant ideas you will generate, select the best version of what you create, and present the output in a way that represents the guiding principles of your organization.
“Whimsical”
“Whimsical” is a tortured acronym for a Worksheet to Help with Interactive Mission Statement Collaboration and Learning.
What follows is a series of instructional videos on how to use the tool in conjunction with the Mission Statements Made Simple course on Business Made Simple University.
If you don’t already have access to the BMSU Mission Statement course, then you should really start there. If you do have access, or you are working with a BMSU coach, then the advantage of using this tool should be readily apparent.
BMSU coaches can get access to this tool by contacting @ashleyguberman on slack. Others can get access by scheduling a conversation about working with Primary Goals to guide you through the process.
Mission Statement
Key Characteristics
Critical Actions
Story Pitch
Theme
Guiding Principles
This part does not need a video. It’s an automatically produced page with the content pulled from other sections of the spreadsheet. No more copy/paste and changes in one place automatically update the final output. There is also a tab for exporting the guiding principles in a format that TablePress can import, which can be seen in use here.
Three Ways to Get Access
- Schedule a complimentary conversation to explore how I can be of service to you as a coach, facilitator, or consultant.
- Purchase Business Made Simple University through my affiliate link, and I’ll share the template with you for free whether we work together or not.
- If your a fellow BMS Certified coach, let’s have a networking conversation to see how we can help each other. Say hello, share our specialties and target audience, then the sheet is yours to use with clients.
Setup and Authorization
Once you have access to the file follow the steps on the “Instructions” tab, or follow along with the video below.