Vision Core · Mission Statement · Module
Recognisability
Whether the people doing the work can find it in the sentence — the test that establishes whether the mission is true rather than merely agreed.
The idea
How it works
Argyris and Schön’s distinction between what an organisation says it does and what it actually does is the reason a mission can be held sincerely and be false. Nobody is lying; the statement simply stopped describing the work.
The test costs an afternoon: read the mission to ten people doing different jobs and ask whether they can find their week in it. The answers are consistent and uncomfortable.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Ask people doing the work, not their managers
Managers describe the intent. People doing the work describe the week.
- 02
Ask what is missing rather than whether they agree
Agreement is polite and free. What the sentence leaves out is the finding.
- 03
Treat a large gap as information about the organisation
Sometimes the statement is wrong; sometimes the organisation has drifted. Both need naming rather than a rewrite.
- 04
Repeat it after any significant change
Acquisitions, new markets and new products all move the work away from the sentence.
One level in
The components of recognisability
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Ask what the sentence leaves out. Asking whether people agree with it produces agreement and no information.
The other modules in mission statement
The statement
What the organisation does, for whom, and to what end — in the present tense, and short enough to be repeated without a document.
LearnScope
What business the organisation is in, and what it is not — drawn too narrowly it goes obsolete with the product; drawn too widely it permits anything.
LearnKeeping it current
What happens when the organisation changes and the mission does not — because drift into inaccuracy is silent and revision should be an event.
Learn