Submit a draft for feedback
Sanderson and his colleague passed numerous drafts back and
forth before finally settling on a four-sentence mission statement
that answered those four key questions. As with any major initiative, having someone to bounce ideas off proved an invaluable
resource in that initial phase — but it still wasn’t enough. Before
christening it the definitive mission of Transplace, Sanderson
sought that extra feedback to fill any gaps and get the necessary
buy-in.
When you’re ready to submit your draft for review, take your pride
out of the equation.
“Some people are afraid to put that statement out there and get
the feedback because it might bruise their ego a little bit,”
Sanderson says. “The focus has to be on how do we get a good
statement out there. I can’t let my thin skin get in the way of a better product.”
The next step is to determine from whom to get that feedback.
Sanderson first presented the draft to members of his leadership
team.
“Once we had the rough draft, we distributed it in an e-mail to the
leadership team and asked for their feedback in writing,” he says.
When you send your draft via e-mail, it gives your team members
more time to process the concepts and the phrasing than they would
have if you simply sprung it up on them in a meeting. In a similar vein,
the e-mail format grants them more time to reflect over their own
feedback, which should ultimately make it that much more insightful.
One thing you want to avoid in the process, Sanderson says, is distributing the mission statement to everyone in the company.
“It’s a fine line to balance,” he says of the 550 employees at
Transplace. “You don’t want to have a culture where the CEO is a
know-it-all and unopen to any suggestions. On the other hand, you
don’t want to have a culture where the CEO isn’t willing to go out on
a limb and say, ‘Here’s the direction we’re headed.’ It is the responsibility of the leadership team to state that direction and hopefully to
have enough experience and wisdom to craft it in such a way that
you’ve at least gotten most of the people on board. You’ve got to just
think about the employees in entirety.”
That doesn’t mean you should only think about your employees though. Sanderson says your mission statement must also
address customers.
“It’s important to help the customer understand what we’re
striving to do,” he says. “It helps them understand whether we’re
a good fit and someone that they would like to do business with.”
As such, it makes sense to also look to customers for feedback.
Identify some of your top clients — those people who you’ve
been doing business with for years — and call to ask for their
opinions.
“Call a customer and say, ‘I’m working on this mission statement; I’d really value your input,’” Sanderson says. “If you’re a
valued supplier of theirs, they’re going to stop what they’re
doing, and they’re going to take a little bit of time and have a conversation about that.”
Once you get a customer on the phone, he says to avoid a word-by-word read through. On the other hand, don’t ask for overgeneralized input.
“It’s too broad a topic to just call and ask them, ‘What do you
think our mission should be?’” he says. “You invite criticism in
that sense: ‘Wait a minute. Don’t you know what your mission
is?’”
Sanderson says to talk about the key concepts you’ve developed instead. Customers will not only help you determine if they
reflect an accurate representation of your organization. They’ll
also help you sift through the kind of company-specific jargon
that plagued Transplace’s mission statement in the first place.
“It makes more sense before you cast it in concrete and get it
posted out on the Internet to get a gauge of how someone who’s
not walking in your shoes is going to interpret that message.”