First, don’t get hung up on the terms. What’s important is to have a documented mission, whether or not it meets someone’s definition of “mission statement” or “vision statement”.
Why it matters: I see agencies with stand alone mission statements that hangs on the wall or live in a dusty binder somewhere on a shelf. I am sure it was drafted with the best of intentions and might even represent what the agency thinks is important, but if it does not drive every action in the agency then it is just pretty words. A good mission is the heart for the agency, and if used, it is powerful!
Here’s a simple process for establishing and supporting a documented mission.
- Document your goal. What is the most important goal your agency is trying to achieve? It is OK to sound like Miss America here. Whatever you put here will be vetted when you create your flight plan and the details are flushed out.
- Document your flight plan. Now start asking yourself “How are we going to accomplish our goal?”. This should be a short list of bullets points. Now, address each bullet point and ask again, “How are we going to accomplish it?”. Do this as many times as you want. At some point you start getting into actions and outcomes. These are the details of the structure, tools and numbers that will be used later to manage the agency.
- Now evaluate your work. Does your documented goal still represent the agency’s highest goal? Do the details flushed out in step 2 represent your agency’s actions and setup? If they don’t then you can either change what you wrote or change the agency so it can achieve the goal.
- Formalize it! Once you have the goal and the first level of the flight plan where you want them then make it official, this is your documented mission! Keep all levels of detail you created for the flight plan. They will be used later.
- Now use it! Post it, quote it, ensure everyone knows it. Open meetings by quoting it, “This agency is here to ... We will accomplish that by ....”. That is a best way to ensure you are accomplishing the agency’s work and not just busy work. Use it to start interviews with prospective employees. Use it when you market to the community. Use it when you update processes, job descriptions, business planning, etc. Use it!
EXAMPLE: Our goal is to be the largest Medicare home care provider in the service area.
We will achieve our goal by:
- helping our patient’s achieve the best possible outcomes; we will achieve this by...
- hiring and retaining highly skilled and caring clinicians
- providing all training, mentoring and tools required
- etc...
- continuing to grow our Medicare home care patient base; we will achieve this by...
- helping patient’s achieve the best possible outcomes
- hiring and retaining highly skilled and caring marketing staff
- etc...
- running a successful business
- be knowledgable
- be efficient
- etc...
Even though this is just an example, you can see that the goal and first level of the flight plan (in bold) is the documented mission of the agency. It can be said in less than 30 seconds so it can be easily used. It can be expanded to define actions and metrics to allow the agency to be managed to achieve its mission.
Let me know if you have any questions (steve@phcm.net). Next we’ll get into STRUCTURE.
No comments:
Post a Comment