Why Purpose Won't Get People on the Same Page

Mission statements are good at inspiring people and bad at aligning them, because a broad purpose can be pursued in a hundred valid directions at once. Teams end up with a lot of motion and very little movement. What actually gets people on the same page is goals: short-term, measurable, specific enough that everyone can point at the same thing and say "this, right now." This article covers why purpose can't do the aligning, and how purpose and goals work together.

I've helped write mission statements, as a pastor and as a founder, and I believe in them. Naming why your organization exists is real work, and a good statement reflects real conviction.

Most organizations have one.

• "Reach the lost. Grow the found."
• "Know God, make Him known."
• "End hunger in our city."
• "Building community. Transforming lives."

Some are short, some are long, some theological, some aspirational. Most are genuinely good statements about what the organization exists to do.

Here's the problem: broad, grand, never-fully-accomplished statements don't get people on the same page. They were never built for that job.

Motion without movement

You can rally a team around a mission statement. You can even work toward it, with full sincerity, for years.

But there are hundreds of legitimate ways to pursue "making disciples" or "serving our community" or "transforming lives." Your program director picks one of those ways. Your development lead picks another. Your volunteers pick a third. Everyone is faithful to the mission, and everyone is moving in a different direction.

The result is a team that's moving fast and working hard, with a lot of motion and not a lot of movement.

Draw it and the problem is obvious. Purpose and mission sit clear and settled on the left. The task lists pile up on the right. And the middle, where the pursuit is supposed to take shape, is a tangle of good intentions heading in every direction at once.

The research on this gap is sobering. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the Harvard researchers behind the Balanced Scorecard, reported that 95% of employees say they don't understand their organization's strategy. The mission was communicated. The strategy was written. And the people doing the daily work still can't connect it to their decisions, because inspiration was asked to do a job that belongs to clarity.

What goals do that purpose can't

What actually gets people aligned is far more practical: goals.

Short-term statements with measurable outcomes. Tangible and tactical. The kind of thing where everyone on your team can look at it and say, "yes, this, right here, is what we're doing right now."

Goals align people for three plain reasons:

• They're easier to understand, because they're specific. "From 45 to 80 students enrolled by September 1" leaves no room for private interpretations.
• They're easier to work toward, because everyone can see what done looks like. The finish line is either crossed or it isn't.
• They're easier to resource, because you know exactly what you're aiming at. Time, money, and people can all be deployed against a defined outcome.

A mission statement can't do any of that, and it shouldn't have to. The formula I use for writing goals that carry this weight is From X to Y by When and Why: the honest starting number, the specific destination, a real date, and the mission reason.

Purpose and goals do different jobs

None of this argues against your mission statement. Purpose answers "why do we exist?" and every organization needs that answer, especially when the work gets hard and people are deciding whether to stay.

Goals answer a different question: "what are we doing about it right now?"

Purpose without goals produces inspired drift. Goals without purpose produce joyless execution. The organizations that move are running both: a mission that explains the work, and three clear goals that define this season's part of it.

Your mission statement should outlive every goal you set. The goals are how anyone can tell, this quarter, that the mission is more than framed art in the lobby.

One Last Thing

Here's what I want you to do this week. Ask three people on your team the follow-up question your mission statement can't answer: "what are we doing right now to pursue it?" If you get three matching answers, your goals are doing their job. If you get three sincere and completely different answers, you've just watched motion without movement, and the fix is three specific goals everyone can name.

If you want to see how we've built this into a tool, watch the demo — it walks through how a team like yours sets and accomplishes goals that actually get people on the same page.

Your mission deserves more than agreement. It deserves movement you can point at.