“Indestructible Attitude”

What’s your two-word mission statement?

What’s your two-word mantra?

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of seeing a keynote speech by Guy Kawasaki who is a well-known social media gadfly these days but made his mark as part of the original Apple team.  I follow Guy on social media because he, or his social media minions, post some great stuff.  It was good to see him speak in the protein form.

Part of his presentation was a riff on how horrible most company mission statements are.  These are easy prey, as most company mission statements are an exercise in bureaucratic farce.  It’s one of the things we in corporate America smile and nod at and then go figure out how to tell a story about our companies that actually means something.

The deeper management science here is; how can you expect anyone in the company to act homogeneously, in other words with one purpose, or colloquially ‘with all the wood behind the arrow’ if your leadership comes up with a directional statement that is void of intelligence?

When your management team builds these (perfectly sensible) nonsensical mission statements they are essentially telling the employees (and the world) that they have no idea what the company’s purpose is and you should go figure it out for yourselves.

The bad news is that this leads to cultural ennui and chaos.  The good news is that cultural ennui and chaos are sometimes better than being tethered to the mindless drones sitting in the C-suite.

Like I said, it’s an easy target.  I remember going to my first board meeting as a member of a management team, looking around the room and thinking, “These jokers are the board?” – but that’s another story.

Getting back to Guy and the corporate mission statement; he posits that the best mission statements are brief and compelling.  Guy said you should be able to put your mission into 2 words.  Guy says that the mission statement should be replaced with a two-word mantra.

He gave examples.

He talked about Nike’s mission statement:

“TO BRING INSPIRATION AND INNOVATION TO EVERY ATHLETE* IN THE WORLD

*IF YOU HAVE A BODY, YOU ARE AN ATHLETE”

Guy said that this was too long and should simply be “Authentically Athletic”.  Whether you love or hate Nike, you have to admit that this is a good two word mission statement.

In a side note I was telling this story to a table full of industry people at lunch later in the week and one of them happened to be a Nike manager.  When I came to the “Authentically Athletic” punchline she was thrilled and wanted to use it.  I had to fess up and tell her it was Guy’s idea.  I didn’t want to claim credit for Guy’s marketing brilliance, but it just shows how right he was.

Why does a short, concise mission statement work so well?  For a number of reasons.  First when you’re forced to choose two words you have to decode what is the most important.   When you look at most two-paragraph mission statements, let’s say there’s 4-6 sentences, each sentence has 2-3 themes in it that’s up to 18 themes or points you’re trying to make with one mission statement.

Folks! That doesn’t work!  It always cracks me up when you ask an organization what their most important drivers are and they respond with a big list of the things that are most important.  Everything can’t be the most important thing!

If you really have all those things as most important your leadership has failed you.  Everyone is pulling in different directions and you’d better start looking out ‘cause this boat is circling the drain.

When you force your leadership team to pick two words it forces them to decide what is important.  What are the umbrella themes or aspirations that the rest of the important things fall into?

Another great thing about short mission statements is that it allows the team being led leeway in aligning with the purpose.  You’re not specifically telling people how to get to the purpose or the aspiration of the mission.  You’re just putting a notch in the tree and letting them figure out the best way to get there.

This is imminently unifying and empowering at the same time.  It’s like asking two radically different ideologues if they love their country.  They will emphatically say “Yes!” even though their ideologies are diametrically opposed.  The tenants of patriotism is a brief and unifying force.

Finally a brief mission statement that accurately captures the purpose of the organization, the “why”, is an extremely powerful motivator.  Employees are not very productive under the carrot and stick approach.  This worked OK back in the early 1900’s production line but it does not motivate today.  What motivates today’s workforce is a strong sense of mission.

That’s why leadership teams started trying to put together mission statements in the first place. They know that if there is a compelling ‘mission’ the employees will work harder to get there.  You’ve all seen these companies with a core mission that resonates.  The culture becomes one of doing whatever it takes to fulfill the mission. That is the pinnacle of intrinsic motivation.

Guy went on to say that individuals should have mission statement too.  He said this as an aside but I found it to be an extremely interesting exercise.

If we were to force you to describe your life mission in two words, what would they be?  What is your purpose?

After we came out of Guy’s session my wise-guy co-worker asked me “So what’s your two-word mission statement?” But, since I had been rolling that question around in my mind I had a quick answer.

“Indestructible Attitude”

The way I thought through the answer was that it needed to be aspirational and act as an umbrella mission for all the other experiences, goals and strengths.

I figured the most powerful thing I can do, that I do, in any situation, work, life, family, sports or community is to have the attitude that I’m indestructible.  Having the attitude that I can weather any storm and find my way eventually to the solution gives me a freedom to act independently and add unique value.

It’s aspirational in the sense that anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not really indestructible, but as long as my attitude is indestructible it will work out, positively.

My homework to you is to think about it and come up with, as Guy suggests, your two word personal mission statement.  Test your mantra out on your peers to see if it is authentic. See what kind of feedback you get.

Then write it on your whiteboard and live it.

Cheers,

Chris,