Preventing Mission Drift

I’m not a big New Year’s Resolution guy, but we find a ton of leadership Books, BLOGS and Seminars that are telling us that it’s critical to take a serious look at ourselves and our work on a regular basis and ask ourselves and our teams some tough questions. It’s easy to have our mission, vision and values posted on the walls of the office and warehouse, as well as stated in the ‘footers’ of our stationary (whether it’s digital or paper) and neglect to ‘check in’ with those statements to see how they’re lining up with what we’re actually doing.

Into the Word

This month we are going to dive into the concept of regular personal and corporate evaluation/examination in order to make sure we are aligned with who we say we are as a Leader, as a company and as men and women of God.

In my 15 years as a corporate coach, I’ve seen some amazing Mission, Vision, and Values statements and yet in many of those cases the Leadership Team had a hard time reciting them off the cuff and an even harder time aligning or justifying the current practices of the company with those guiding principles. That’s why I believe there’s a strong case for regular review, evaluation and Re-Set.

It’s easy to get caught up in what I call ‘Mission Drift’ because we get so focused on acquiring clients, creating proposals, executing product development, completing projects, problem solving in each of these areas and starting it all over as soon as we can. Of course there’s nothing wrong with any of these things in and of themselves, and they must be done in a timely and professional way or we won’t make money. But what’s left out of the list is a ’circle the wagons’ opportunity to step back and evaluate how well you’re aligned, not just how much you’re doing.

In the Workplace

We will also be doing some practical examining and reviewing of how well aligned we are with the Mission, Vision and Values we’ve established for ourselves and our business.

In Galatians 6:4, Paul challenges us with these words, “But each one must examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another.

We need to incorporate the practice of personal and corporate examination into our business plan. If not, we will discover that we have drifted from our Mission, Vision, and Values, both in attitude and action.