Should companies and individuals worry about a mission statement?

 I have a different opinion from Mr. Morley (on Quora). IME people want something valuable to spend their lives doing. Living from wage to wage, “Level One Techniques” of rewards and punishments is not enough. Working hard to make someone else rich is not it. Most companies use rewards and punishments as their primary means of employment and control. Yet non-profit organizations are able to get huge pools of energy out of people not because of rewards, but because of a sense of purpose.

I conclude that executives without a robust and inspiring “charter” are negligent or lazy or simply habitually falling back on what they know. All of this is a function of VABEs. What are VABEs? Kahneman received a Nobel Prize for the concept that people make huge decisions based on their beliefs over evidence and data. In other words, VABEs “trump” data.

Every human makes a choice to either develop a plan for their lives or to live from day to day reacting to what’s happening around them. The latter drift. The former often do great things.

I developed the concept of a charter over 40 years researching, consulting and teaching worldwide. A Charter begins with a one sentence, inspiring mission statement. BAES: “We protect those who protect us.” VDOT: “Keep Virginia Moving.” Coca-Cola: “Refresh the World.” Sallie Mae: “We make education affordable for everyone.”

If you give the drafting of a mission statement to a committee, six months later they will arrive at “we deliver world-class goods and services that delight our customers beyond their expectations and yield an above-industry average return to our investors.” It’s vanilla, uninspiring, undifferentiating from any other corporation.

Many executives confuse and conflate “mission” and “vision.” The first is “what we do” and the second is “where we are going.” Getting that distinction seems beyond most executives (in my experience). But there’s more.

What do we stand for? HOW do we do business? And HOW are we going to get to our vision? And what will we measure? And most importantly WHO is going to make these decisions / determinations? IF no one does, the organization will drift and it’s members will be confused and focused on their wages—not some purpose that they believe in.

I also think individuals should, like every company, have a robust and inspiring charter IF they want to have direction and focus to their lives and to feel good about what they are doing with their limited 164 hours a week or ~640,000 hours of life. It’s your life, you can decide, you DO decide whether to live it intentionally or “outside-in” reacting to the momentary forces around you.

I have a personal charter. I had a charter for my academic team—and was told after our first annual review with the dean that our area (out of ten) was “by far the best prepared.” I had a charter for my 8 years as CEO of a 3,000 person/8 unit non-profit organization. After 8 years our performance was applauded by all.

People live “outside-in” IME because of lazy minds or the fear of rejection. In some sense, any society depends on obedience and conformity. Leaders, however, must live more ”inside-out” than “outside-in.” Most people don’t do that. Largely because of the repetition of habits they learned as defenseless children. Very few find the courage to “rise above” their early childhood conditioning to assert their view on the world around them.

For more see my website at Level Three Leadership

BTW, my personal “mission” in life is “to help people find themselves.” This grew out of my history of having had three last names—and applied to everything I have done in life: marriage, parenting, researching, teaching, consulting, writing, and now in retirement, still writing and weekly Quora responses.

In the end, again, it’s your life. You can choose to live it “outside-in” in reaction or “inside-out” creating what you want to do with your life, something you believe in and with which you can see a vision of what you could become. It’s up to you. You are the Captain of your ship. (Abramoff, “It’s Your Ship”)

Will you ever become anything more than a vessel transmitting the genes and VABEs of previous generations on to the next? (Csikszentmihalyi “The Evolving Self”)

What is the role of "culture" in socializing individual behavior?

Every baby receives two main “gifts:” a set of genes and immediately after birth the constant pressure to conform to the VABEs of the parents. What are VABEs?

Genes are physical packets of information that we continue to learn about and which have enormous influence on our behavior. Imbalances in the 300 + known chemicals in the human brain can cause debilitating conditions like schizophrenia (1% of the population worldwide) and many other syndromes/mental illnesses.

Right after birth the people who are caring for the defenseless baby are by their very examples and precepts educating the child on what is acceptable and what is not. If you and I had been born in different regions of the globe, clearly our VABEs would be dramatically different. All children are raised in three major VABEs of the parents: I know what’s right for you, I have a responsibility to teach you what’s right for you, and I have a responsibility to punish you if you don’t do what’s right for you. (Thank you Bill Glasser Choice Theory) So defenseless babies are taught what’s okay and what’s not okay. And that varies from region to region, from culture to culture. Culture by the way is a set of shared VABEs.

So is “useful to society” a citizen that simply accepts and passes on that culture—however misguided it may be? There are 23 countries that still tolerate and in so doing teach female circumcision and mutilation. Should a child be required to memorize the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, the Bagavagita, the Tao de Ching? Virtually all of the VABEs that parents impose on their children are regionally based. Again, if you and I had been born in a different global region, our VABEs would be very different.

So “culture” (a set of shared VABEs) is what teaches a child acceptable and unacceptable behavior. These are usually “set” by ages six to ten (depending on the child developmental scholars one reads). Changing those VABEs then becomes a big challenge—and so cultures persist generation after generation.

The acclaimed psychologist Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi noted in his book The Evolving Self that most people are simply vessels that transmit the VABEs of the last generation onto the the next generation. SO, the most important question in life becomes:

“Will you ever be anything more than a vessel (like a viral shell) transmitting the genes and VABEs of previous generations on to the next?” The answer for the vast majority of people is “no.”

Few, maybe 1–5% of people are willing, able and courageous enough to challenge the VABEs they were taught as defenseless children—much less actually change them. In my seminars worldwide, people estimate that the people they know are 95–99% habituated to their VABEs. Mindlessly repeating them year after year. Kiss, bow, or shake hands? (a book) And the greeting is just the tiny tip of a huge iceberg of VABEs.

What are the characteristics of a "cult?"

IMO borrowing from several sources, common cult characteristics include the following:

1. A charismatic, articulate, intelligent, energetic and persuasive leader (Jones, Hitler, Hubbard, Erhard, Smith, Mohammad etc.)
2. Big big lies about the nature of the world and the leader’s authority to speak above others
3. Attempts to control and dominate every aspect of member’s lives including financially, diet, clothing, speech, behavior, meetings, progression
4. Secret rituals and ceremonies that one is allowed more of as loyalty is demonstrated.
5. Restriction of information, news, and reading. Read a limited and focused supporting library. “Shouldn’t” read this or that or be in certain channels of news.
6. Repeated channels, meetings, instructions that reinforce the core tenets of the cult. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual structures and repetitions.
7. Repeated pressure to memorize various aspects of the cult—passages, quotes, scriptures, secret rituals, concepts. Tests to confirm one’s dedication to “learning” the tenets of the cult.
8. Pressure to engage in unorthodox sexual activity including sex with the leader/founder.  
9. Difficulty in leaving the organization. Threats, intimidations, refusals to acknowledge desires to leave, promises of dire consequences, fear mongering. (damnation, excommunication, physical and financial decay, etc.)
10. Demand the sacrifice of members to prove their loyalty and devotions. Money, time, energy, volunteer work, you must sacrifice to prove loyalty.
11. Have a central place or facility seen to be the gathering place or core of the organization and to which members are encouraged or required to visit. Temples, sacred sites, founding locations, etc.
12. A hierarchy of tests of behavior as one moves toward the center of the organization.
13. A group of “scholars” who spend their time justifying and “validating” the wild claims made (see #2 above) made by the founder/leader/ using pseudo-scientific methods and channels.
14. A sense of superiority as if membership in the cult makes one special, better than others, more “blessed”, more informed, and entitled to secret and restricted knowledge and understanding.
15. The idea that “normal” society is evil, misguided, savage, unrefined, ignorant, or in some other way below or beneath the cult therefore interaction with the rest of society is discouraged.
16. Insights that disagree with the cult leadership are discounted and ostracized.

This is not a comprehensive list and IME the characteristics that “cults” display but the ones that come to mind from my experience and reading.  

What was/is the Peter Principle?

 The Peter Principle gained awareness and popularity after Laurence Peter published a book by that name in 1972. The core concept was that people will rise (be promoted) to the level of their incompetency in an organization and therefore many people in their current positions were incompetent to be there. Once one is deemed incompetent, they will not be promoted further so they linger at their level of incompetence creating messes.

There are some serious issues with this concept, notably the pervasive assumption that success means being promoted. Driver and Brousseau at USC presented their work on four Career Concepts each of which had different definitions of success. Linears want to be promoted and view increasing power and status as success. Experts however seek to be craftsmen and artisans and eschew being promoted into jobs they don’t like. Spirals are motivated by constant learning and get bored on the way to the top and will actually give up power and status for the sake of learning and new experience. Transitories only work to support some other love like sailing around the world or climbing the Himalayas. ALL have important and different contributions to make to an organization. Sadly, IME most Linears assume everyone is like them and make the rules to benefit Linears.

Every person in every seminar I’ve ever taught all over the world has seen an excellent Expert ruined by promotion into management. Wise Linears will recognize and reward the Experts who do all the work, the Spirals who innovate, and the Transitories that allow them to expand and contract the workforce during economic variations.

There is a self-assessment tool on my website at Level Three Leadership if you have more interest.

How do we know the profession we are "made for" or in which we are talented enough to succeed, like maybe cricket?

 Jim Collins asserted a "hedgehog concept" which was the sweet spot where like a hedgehog we do one thing really well. The hedgehog concepts occurred he said at the intersection of passion, talent and demand (who would pay for it). The odds of playing professional sports or music or acting are low compared with the number of people who want to. How many players, actors, writers, and musicians have the passion but not the talent and therefore little demand?

In my 40 years of studying and teaching career management, I’ve settled on “goodness of FIT” between a person’s dominant and enduring “Life Themes” (habits) and the demands made by a job/career/profession. Most people may (or may not) find this fit by trial and error. That’s an expensive way to go as one can waste time, energy and some percentage of one’s life searching, Much less expensive to spend some time/life clarifying with evidence what your life themes are and then searching for the good fit.

I’ve concluded that everyone should have a personal “charter” beginning with one’s purpose in life. One defining sentence. For me, “to help people find themselves.” That grew out of having three last names and personal passions. IF you see your purpose in life to play cricket, you could pursue that professionally or if that doesn’t work out, you could find work at which you could “play cricket” and then play recreationally on the side.

I asked my mentor at Harvard to watch me teach. Afterward, he said I was boring. Thunk! An arrow to the heart. He noted “you play basketball with the doctoral students.” I said, “I do, I love basketball.” “Well, it’s obvious. You come back floating above the floor exuding energy. You need to figure out how to play basketball in the classroom.” I was deflated because I had the VABE ( What are VABEs? ) that “work is work and play is play.” The more I thought about it, there IS a tip off. We pass the “ball” (who’s talking) around the room. Someone says something really good/makes a long shot and then we race down the “court” to the other end. One COULD play basketball in the classroom. That experience transformed my life and career.

BECAUSE I was able/willing to examine my VABEs and adjust them to fit the world around me.

I encourage you to draft/write a personal charter (see below and my website at Level Three Leadership ) then to figure out how to take the joy you get playing cricket with you wherever you go and in whatever you do. MAYBE you’ll persist well enough to play professionally. But if not, you will have created your passion in whatever you do. It’s your life. It’s your choice. Every day is one day farther from birth and closer to the last chapter. Enjoy every day.