A Mission Statement That Actually Means Something
Mission Done Right
If you've ever worked in a business, you've probably been involved in or heard about a mission statement. Often, mission statements are incredibly boring, confusing, and pretty much pointless.
If a mission statement doesn't instantly guide the actions of the people within the business, it's not done correctly.
I want to tell you about a mission statement that guided my business for over 10 years, and show you a framework for developing a mission statement that can work for you.
Not just for businesses
What's really cool about mission statements is they aren’t just for businesses. They could be created for your personal life, or for your family, too.
But first, let me start with my original business, Big Belly Services. I’ll share the vision statement for that business and then get into its mission statement.
A vision statement is a higher-level way to think about your work. If you could create a perfect world, your vision is what would happen because of the work you do. It's nice to have a vision statement because it gives you an overarching big, beautiful picture of what you’re working toward (but will likely never see).
The vision of Big Belly Services is to create a more peaceful world by promoting healthy births, honoring this sacred earth that we all inhabit, illuminating the intersections of health with racial and social justice, and modeling sustainable food production
Pretty big and lofty, huh? I hope I at least moved the needle a little bit toward that version of the world.
Now here’s the mission for Big Belly Services:
The mission of Big Belly Services is to change the culture of birth by serving birthing families and professionals with birth education and support that focuses on social and racial justice. We do this with services and curricula that are heart-centered, soulful, and abundance-focused.
Break It On Down
I loved my mission statement. I used it for over 10 years and it drove all of my actions during that time. Here's how it worked for me...
First, I'm going to dissect my mission statement to show you the three things that are important for a mission statement to be effective.
#1: It says what I want to accomplish: To change the culture of birth. Then it talks about how I do that:
#2: By serving birthing families and professionals with birth education and support.
And then this third piece is about my values:
#3: That focuses on social and racial justice. And We do it in a way that is heart-centered, soulful, and abundance-focused.
You Should Know What You'll Get
Now, I didn't just whip up that mission statement on the back of a napkin! I started by using a framework to come up with the three components and then put them together into a statement.
What makes this mission statement work is that, if someone considered working for Big Belly Services, or if someone thought about using Big Belly Services, they could read the mission statement and have a pretty good idea of what they'd be working for as an employee, and what values or characteristics would be a good fit or not.
If they were thinking of buying services from Big Belly Services, they'd know where their money was going, and they'd know what kind of services they were going to get and what that might feel like in the process.
That's what a good mission statement does.
So let's take a look at the framework to build one...
The Three Components of a Mission Statement That Works
There are three things that you want your mission statement to do.
#1
The first one is to foreshadow the outcome. That's a fancy way of saying, What is it that you're working toward?
For Big Belly Services, it was changing the culture of birth.
That’s what was going to happen if Big Belly Services was successful in its mission.
#2
The second component is the key characteristics of the business. That refers to the people or the way that the work is done.
For Big Belly Services, the key characteristics were a focus on racial and social justice. We were heart-centered, soulful, and abundance-focused. Those were the values and how things were done within the company.
You can use your key characteristics as a criteria check; if something you're thinking of doing, providing, or creating within your company doesn't support those key characteristics, you probably shouldn't do it.
Otherwise, you might be distracting your energy away from your core values. It might derail the work that your company is doing. Basically, it's just not in alignment.
You want to focus on aligning the key characteristics with both your services and your staff. If people feel like they don't fit in, they don’t belong, or they’re not sure if they're contributing, bring them back to the key characteristics. Those are things you can put into a job description to define how work is done within your company.
#3
The third part of the three components is the critical actions.
The critical actions are the things that you do in your company. For Big Belly Services, our critical actions were to provide professionals and families with support and education around birth.
Your critical actions should describe what your business is doing on a daily basis. These are things you're doing that are repeatable. They give a sense of what the operations are like, what's happening, and what are the products and services that you provide.
And What It's Not...
To recap, the three critical components of your mission statement are:
Foreshadowing the outcome: What are you trying to create? Why are you doing this?
The key characteristics: How you do the work and what are the values reflected in your work?
The critical actions: The actual things that are done in the daily life of your business and that are repeatable actions.
So, that's what a good mission statement is.
What a mission statement isn't, is goals.
It's Not the Least Bit SMART
The elements of a mission statement are not measurable. They're not time bound. They could not drive my actual performance in a given period of time.
They're not SMART goals.
SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound.
Now, I’d like to think my mission statement was achievable. And relevant.
But relevant in goals refers to supporting the mission statement.
What people often do is include things that are too specific in their mission statement. Then they get confusing, too long, and meaningless.
A mission statement should provide an overall view into the future that pertains to everyone on the team. If it starts to dictate what individuals do on a daily basis, it won't apply to all the people who work in your company.
How My Mission Statement Worked for Me
So let me tell you about how my mission statement worked for me and Big Belly Services.
My mission statement started out by saying I served professionals and families. I wasn't just working with childbearing families. I was also training doulas.
I wanted to create an army of doulas who were going to go out and serve birthing families in a way that was informed by racial and social justice.
So I built that into my curriculum. There wasn't a single course that I provided that didn't have racial and social justice in my mind when I was creating it, or in how the information was being shared with students. They were indoctrinated with that kind of information that informed how they would do their work in the world as well.
Remember, I was trying to create a new culture, a new way of doing birth!
And the values I held is that our work would be heart-centered. It would come from the heart and be mindful, considerate, thoughtful, and compassionate. And it would be soulful...it would have authenticity to it, something that resonated in our guts, in our bellies, something that felt like a personal mission or what we came to earth to do.
And finally, it was abundance-focused, not based on scarcity. There wasn't any competition. None of that, “I can't tell this doula that thing because she might get my clients.” I believe ‘The rising tide lifts all boats.’
We were there to help each other. We were there to build up as many people as possible. I still work toward creating as many doulas as possible to serve as many families as possible so that we can change — if not the entire culture of birth — at least the birth for each of those families so they have a better experience than they would have had without a doula.
My mission drove my curricula, how I showed up, why I opened a class in a mindful way that acknowledged the land we were on and the people that were sitting in circle with us.
The other factor is that my mission was part of a bigger vision for Big Belly Services which had to do with food sustainability and honoring the earth.
Beyond the Mission
My business wasn't just Big Belly Services. Or maybe I should say my life’s work wasn’t only birth.
I also created an urban farm, and built a greenhouse in my front yard. In that greenhouse, I started seeds saved from my garden in hundreds of little pots. I sold seedlings and gave them away.
I did free community education to anybody in my neighborhood, anyone that walked by and saw my greenhouse and wondered what all this amazing stuff was growing in my front yard. I had medicinal herbs and culinary herbs. All sorts of plants that attracted bees and pollinators. It was an incredible teaching opportunity.
And passersby didn't even know what was going on in the backyard! There, I had chickens and seven raised beds and was growing tons of vegetables and fruit trees.
I inspired people in my neighborhood who would come every spring and ask, What are you going to grow this year? What's that plant growing there? When are your seedlings going to be ready?
They would come back years later and tell me, ‘We're still harvesting kale from that little plant we got from you. The chicken that you gave us isn't laying eggs anymore, but she's still strutting around and getting all the insects in the garden.’
It was the most wonderful feeling knowing I made a difference in my little corner of the world. I was raising awareness about what people ate, what they could grow, how they could feed their own families and create the sustainability that is so important to me.
The motto for all of my work was: Growing families. Growing food. Growing futures.
I was growing families with my doula work, growing food with my urban farm, and growing futures with the people I trained to be birth professionals. I also grew futures through retreats that helped people get more connected to themselves, more connected to the land, more connected to the seasons, and more connected to each other.
It was a great experience to create a vision and mission statement that guided me into the future. It was my gauge for Should I do this thing or not? Does it fit or not?
Today...
Today, I run a marketing and copywriting company, Storyline Marketing.
The mission of Storyline Marketing is to bring life into companies that have historically struggled: heart-centered businesses. I do that by using my skills as a doula in the business realm. I show business owners how to talk about their work, help them clarify why they are in business, and provide coaching and online courses to create marketing strategies and materials that reflect their hearts. I do this in an authentic, soulful, and abundance-focused way that makes a positive impact.
Sound familiar?
It's a Living Thing
The beautiful thing is that a mission statement is alive. You can create it, revise it, throw the damn thing away, create a new one, and start again.
Just like you can reinvent yourself, you can reinvent your businesses.
So my invitation to you is: Play around with writing a mission statement.
Maybe you want to write one for your personal mission in life, or maybe just for the next 10 years.
Or maybe you want to write a mission statement for your family. What does your family want to do in your lives, in your neighborhoods? Do you want to change your generational legacy?
Or maybe you're starting a business or already in a business but it's not inspiring you. Revamp it and start again!
I invite you to use the mission statement framework and see what you come up with.
I would love to hear from you. How is your mission statement working for you?
Or do you have some different tips for mission statements? Let me know.
Thank you so much for thinking about how to make purpose and meaning in our lives. How we can set a compass point that moves us in that direction, that provides a guiding light to follow so we can make an impact in the world with our lives and our work that we are really proud of.
Best wishes to you and your work with a mission.
I’ll be leading folks in creating their mission statement this week on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, at 10am PST. If you are working on the Why of your business, join me or sign up to get the replay.
Pillar #1: ICAs (ideal client avatar), Niche, & Your Movement
March 5, 10am-1pm PDT
All the tricks for getting the “right” clients.
In this workshop, you’ll learn
- Setting the foundation for your marketing message (do not start marketing without this!)
- Your mission and movement
- Identifying who you want to serve
- Identifying your niche
- Creating the right products and packages
- Pricing for success
You’ll get live instruction, tools and templates, skills practice, and feedback.
