The problem with most mission statements and the strategy points that often follow them is their haziness and their breadth. Peter Drucker called such statements ”hero sandwiches of good intentions,” stacked with way too many ingredients to really encourage focus and clarity among leadership and staff. Worse yet, many organizations clearly see their mission statements as lip service to appease external constituents. We’ll say we’re about transforming communities and serving youth, but we really just want to do the art we want to do in whatever way we want to do it.
To me, at least, clarity is the next big challenge for cultural organizations over the coming decade. We’ve got plenty of tools and strategies to work with (although we can always learn how to use them better). We’ve got a good sense of the inputs and outputs that make us work. The question remaining is: what, exactly, do we exist to do? And what’s the most elegant, responsive, and responsible path that gets us there?
To that end, I’m rather fond of the vision, promise, and goal set of the Sydney Opera House (available here), which really seek clarity about the business they’re in, and the goals that follow from that realization. Take a look:
Vision: To Excite and Inspire the Imagination
Our Promise:
To take people on a journey from the ordinary to the extraordinary into a world where the inspiration of the building outside is reflected in all we do. In short, we are in the business of Inspiring Experiences.GOAL 1
Be Australia’s pre-eminent showcase for performing arts and culture and an international leader in the presentation and development of artists and their work.GOAL 2
Attract and engage a broad range of customers and provide compelling experiences that inspire them to return.GOAL 3
Maintain and enhance the Sydney Opera House as a cultural landmark, performing arts centre and architectural masterpiece.GOAL 4
Create a customer focused workplace where people are recognised for their contribution, realise their potential and inspired to achieve outstanding results.GOAL 5
Invest in the performing arts, cultural activities and audience development by maximising business results of the Sydney Opera House and leveraging its assets, resources and brand.
You may like it, you may hate it. But at least it’s clear. And better yet, these goals become a public yardstick by which management and constituents can gauge the organization’s success over time.
I like the idea that you bring up about clarity.
In this field there has been a lot of the “we exist to change the world” thing, but then continue on in general, unexecutable non-specific “vision” of something that can’t be specifically grabbed hold of.
These are good thoughts that many in the creative world should take notice of.
I agree about the need for clarity, but I’m not sure this is such a great example. In the “promise” statement, the idea of having the inside be reflective of the outside is a nice sentiment, but the “journey” metaphor is hackneyed and the “inspiring experiences” stuff is silly brochure copy. (I was at a tourism conference recently where an executive from Disneyworld used identical language to describe what his company did.) What does it mean? If the meaning can be described in more specific, more arts-relevant language, then that’s the language that ought to go into the mission statement.
I think there are a handful of words that ought to be retired for a while from the arts lexicon. Among them are ‘experience’ and ‘inspire.’ They are what advertisers describe as wallpaper – messages that blend into the background as a result of overexposure. If we avoid these overused verbal crutches, we’ll be forced to use language that is more accurate, more descriptive and more meaningful to audiences who aren’t tuned in to our artsspeak shorthand.
Ultimately, I believe that specific, unambiguous, descriptive language will be more effective and ‘inspirational’ than all the elf-congratulatory clichés we arts insiders take so for granted.