A Few Words on Mission, etc.
By
Walter O. Einstein, Ph.D.
Before we begin, there are several words that need clarification:
Goals: Goals are long term “fuzzy” aims that reflect a future vision and strategic intent of the
firm’s key leadership. Paul Niven’s 2002 book “Balanced Scorecard Step-By-Step: Maximizing
Performance and Maintaining Results” explains “The strong human desire to meet a
predetermined goal has been with us since time immemorial. ‘If a sailor knows not what harbor
is sought, any wind is the right wind......’ ‘The great thing in this world is not so much where we
are, but in what direction we are moving.....’” Niven and I like Yogi Berra’s, “If you don't know
where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” Although these quotes represent
vastly different times, places, and perspectives, what they do have in common is the focus on a
future destination. Goals have no specific time frame but often sound as though they do. Goals
have been an important part of our language, but because they are often confused with
“objectives”
Objectives: Objectives are SMART, smart, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time specific
activities that can be assigned to a group or an individual
Initiatives: Initiatives have the characteristic of action and taking the first move. Balanced
Scorecards need initiatives to fully tell your strategic story. However, without corresponding
objective(s), measurement tool(s), a specific temporal target, and an identified care taker your
performance data lacks the feedback necessary for analysis and decision making. In your
strategic plan I expect you to organize these data in a way that you can use. The graphic that I
will present in class as an example shows a strategy map for one of the themes in the internal
perspective and how the initiatives of that theme integrate the principal goal into definable
assignable specific objectives that are measurable, achievable, realistic and time focused listing
the care taker or owner.
Vision, Strategic Intent, and Mission Statements………
Are very similar and serve distinct purposes:
Strategic vision, intent, and mission are formed in light of the information and insights gained
from studying a firm’s internal and external environments. Vision statements are primarily
communicated internally and should be worded in such a way that they inspire the human spirit.
Strategic intent describes how resources, capabilities, and core competencies will be leveraged
to achieve desired outcomes in the competitive environment. Strategic intent is also
communicated internally and should use terms that are understandable to internal stakeholders.
Mission statements are communicated externally as well as internally and should be carefully
articulated so that they enhance reputation. A strategic mission statement is an application of
strategic intent. It tells your stakeholders what the basic business definition is. It is the
fundamental, unique purpose that sets the business apart from other firms of its type and broadly
identifies the scope of its operation. It is often called the ends the organization seeks.
A Few Words on Mission 4 - 11
Let’s start from the beginning with a vision. You want your team to win the Capstone®
simulation. That translated into something like this: “Build our business by penetrating new
markets and customer segments and by offering a variety of products to all our customers.”
Unfortunately that only takes into consideration the financial perspective of your business:
“Build our business…..” A truly effective mission statement focuses readers on your basic
business definition as it:
Crystallizes long-term direction,
Reduces risk of rudderless decision-making,
Conveys organizational purpose and identity,
Keeps direction-related actions of lower-level managers on common path,
Helps the firm prepare for the future.
It is useful for you to show the steps that got you to your final mission statement using the “5
whys” technique developed by Collin & Porras in: “Building Your Company’s Vision” a HBR
On Point article.
Further, to prepare a truly global mission plan you must take into consideration all four
perspectives of your business suggested by the Balanced Scorecard. Here’s an example of a
complete mission statement as expressed in all four of the strategic perspectives of the Balanced
Scorecard:
The mission of ____________ is to become the BEST sensor manufacturing
company in the world by dedicating our resources, our talents
and our energies to provide high-end sensors that help improve
electronic communication for people around the world.”
(This is the part you communicate to stakeholders and permits you to employ the “5 whys”
technique)
In order to accomplish our mission our strategic goals include:
1. Build the Financial perspective of our business: by penetrating new
markets and customer segments and by offering a variety of products to all
our customers.
2. Increase Customer value: expand, deepen, or redefine relationships with
existing customers (for instance, cross sell services, become trusted advisor
and consultant, transform unprofitable customers) through multiple sales
cycles.
3. Achieve operational excellence: through the Internal productivity that
enables our firm to provide efficient, zero-defect, and timely delivery of
existing products and services to customers. Also to manage asset utilization
and resource capacity.
A Few Words on Mission 4 - 12
4. Recognize the importance of Learning & Growth by being a good
corporate citizen: manage relationships with external, legitimizing
stakeholders, especially in industries subject to regulation or safety and
environmental risk. Also to support the community’s social support system.
The following comes out of the mission statement so the executive staff can communicate their
vision and intent to all stakeholders:
Being the BEST means:
Being the BEST at satisfying the needs of everyone we serve: manufacturers of electronic
components that use our sensors, employees, communities where we operate, governments and
shareholders;
Being BETTER AND FASTER than our competitors at discovering and bringing to market
important new sensors in selected markets;
Operating with the HIGHEST professional and ethical standards in all our activities, building on
the firm’s heritage of integrity;
Being seen as the BEST place to work, attracting and retaining talented people at all levels by
creating an environment that encourages them to develop their potential to the fullest;
Generating consistently BETTER results than our competitors, through innovation and a total
commitment to quality in everything we do.
From these goal statements and the expanded mission statements your team can define
initiatives and assign objectives. Without these ideas being communicated, the firm will cast
about as a ship without a rudder or a blind hog seeking the acorn. Both gain the prize on
occasion, but at great risk of failure. Or as Yogi Berra’s, “If you don't know where you are
going, you might wind up someplace else.”
Mission is the Star We Steer By ….. (A quote from Frances Hesselbein, former leader of
the Girl Scouts)
An organization's direction begins with a mission. Because the mission captures the essence of
what an organization does and why—its raison d'etre, it is at the core of its aspirations, and
hence direction. In addition, mission has a primacy in the nonprofit sector, because it also serves
as a source of inspiration by defining the significance and importance of the organization's work.
In addition to being the initial source of direction, the mission serves as a source of inspiration
by defining the significance and importance of the organization's work. In this sense, mission is
the psychological and emotional logic that provides the energy that drives the organization.
Thus, it also serves the motivation function by inducing people both inside and outside the
organization to invest their resources, their time, their energies, and their passions in the service
of the direction embedded in the mission.
A Few Words on Mission 4 - 13
As clear and as compelling as a mission may be, its purpose is chiefly to guide and inspire.
Missions are typically framed at levels so broad that they cannot provide sufficient detail or
focus for an organization to make concrete choices about how to execute its mission. Consider
the mission of SMILES, a New Bedford, Massachusetts not-for-profit organization:
“Help at-risk children realize their personal and educational potential through a
large scale one-on-one mentoring program.”
This mission statement can inspire, it can tell us what direction we are going in, but it is not
precise enough to tell us how the organization should be designed, how specific activities should
be performed, where resources should be allocated, or what policies should prevail.
It is also the case that the mission, because it is produced and evaluated in accordance with a
framework that is fundamentally psychological in nature, is not likely to be useful for evaluating
an organization's economic viability. It may well be that we can all agree we are excited about
making an attempt to help at-risk children, but that is not sufficient to tell us whether we are
going to be able to get enough money to do what we need to do to achieve that ideal.
The Balanced Scorecard is how the mission is articulated into action by setting goals to provide
a framework for the perspectives used in the Scorecard. Here’s an example of how a mission
enables the SMILES organization to set meaningful goals:
The following summarizes the goals and initiatives that will direct SMILES’s efforts in the near
future and beyond.
Goal: Obtain financial resources necessary to accomplish the mission.

Initiatives:
1. Secure and retain grant funding.
2. Hold fundraisers
3. Seek financial resources from area institutes
Goal: Organize and administer internal procedures required to operate mentoring programs.

Initiatives:
1. Produce efficient data collection system.
2. Implement office and management systems
3. Research and comply with legal standards
4. Implement employee training
Goal: Solicit every qualified adult in the region capable of being a mentor.

Initiatives:
1. Seek cooperation from leaders in various segments of community.
2. Explore and utilize all avenues of getting the message out. (Public Relations)
A Few Words on Mission 4 - 14
3. Develop mentor retention program.
What the mission statement cannot and should not be expected to do is provide the basis for
ensuring the economic viability of the organization. Economic viability stems from the ability of
an organization to secure from the environment the resources it needs to create its products and
deliver its services. This is where strategy—the next steps after goals have been articulated —
comes in.
Strategy is the economic logic of an organization. It is the body of knowledge directly concerned
with the success and failure of organizations. On the most basic level, this is manifested as
survival: do they live or die? In the competitive and unforgiving markets in which for-profits
exist, life and death are routine occurrences. In the not-for-profit sector, market forces and social
investors have historically been more forgiving, and death may not be as quick to come to
underperforming organizations. However, this pattern appears to be changing, as the high-profile
failures of a number of nonprofits in recent years testify
Above and beyond survival, strategy is most concerned with performance. For a for-profit
organization, performance is typically defined in terms of profitability or economic returns to its
owners. For the nonprofit (as well as for some for-profits), performance is defined more broadly,
typically in terms of achieving the mission. Regardless of the specific conception of
performance, the role of strategy is to help managers understand, predict, and control the longterm prosperity of their organizations and industries.
Strategy is more specific than mission in terms of the parameters that it places around what an
organization does, for whom it does it, and how it goes about doing it. Indeed, many stress that
strategy is fundamentally about choice. Strategy should also be evaluated with criteria that are
different from those used to evaluate mission. For this reason alone, it is important to maintain
clarity about the function of mission and the function of strategy. The fact that strategy is
important and has its own unique role to play in defining the direction and design of a non-profit
does not mean that mission should be subservient to strategy. Perhaps one of the defining
features of a nonprofit is that the mission should take priority over the economic concerns that
are the province of strategy. But mission cannot, and should not, serve as the basis for evaluating
or ensuring a nonprofit's economic viability. Similarly, strategy should not be put to the test of
being exciting or inspiring. The benefit of being clear about the mission, as well as the strategy,
is that it allows each to be evaluated in accordance with appropriate criteria drawn from
frameworks developed precisely to ensure that each of these two important features of any
organization can be formulated effectively.
A Few Words on Mission 4 - 15