Make WHY your mission!
Try to understand the purpose for what you are doing. Why do you do what you do?
By Lars G. Harrison
WHY is critical to your life and work mission and purpose statment as an individual and as an organization.
When people and organizations are formulating their mission statements, they often write the mission or purpose statement with WHAT and HOW they are going to do. Beginning to write the purpose opens the mind to new horizons, but it is often the WHY that is neglected that actually makes the most sense. Do you clearly know WHY you want to do and are going to do?
To me, the WHY is the mission of a person's or an organization's existence and purpose for being. The WHAT and HOW will change and take shape and form as appropriate, once the WHY has been declared and realized. Having a mission and purpose is paramount, but seldom do we ask ourselves, WHY we are doing and planning on doing what we do. What is the reason for doing what we do? What are we contributing to ourselves, our neighbors, our community and to the world and the environment? For business, solving problems by providing superior affordable products and services, making customers feel better, making a better world, etc. should be the focus. Exceeding the customer's expectation should be the focal point. The focus should also be on a WIN-WIN relationship, or rather making sure that the other entity is better esteemed than yourself. For as Carnegie stated it: "If you make other get what they want in life, you will get what you want."
Why are we doing what we do and to what tangible and intangible effects and benefits would our purpose and doing give to the recipients, our customers, should be our main thought and operating motive. They most likely will come back to seek our business because of the WHY, more than the WHAT and HOW?
Ask yourself next time you sit down with a project and business case or a personal activity that requires a mission and purpose statement, WHY am I doing this? And for whom and whose end benefit? By being altruistic, you indeed have a greater chance to reap rewards. If you aim to please others, you are bound to pleased.
Lars G. Harrison can be reached at lars_harrison@yahoo.com.
Copyright © 1996 Harrison on Leadership. All Rights Reserved.