BUILDING A WINNING CULTURE:

LEAD WITH PURPOSE

In Mumbai, India, a city of 17 million people, many other corporate mission statements.
fast food has a unique meaning. Every Their simple goal is to serve their customers
workday, about five thousand dabbawalas, accurately and on time, every time. They also
or lunch-box people, deliver nearly a have a unique value proposition: Unlike fast
quarter-million home-cooked lunches to food chains, they bring a hot lunch right to
workers around this vast, tumultuous city you, no matter where you are.
at high speed and without error!
People with a simple, unique, powerful
mission are the most engaged people. Yet the
EFFORT AND whole notion of mission has produced a lot
of cynicism. There are two reasons for that:
COURAGE ARE NOT 1. Too many mission statements are
meaningless platitudes.

ENOUGH WITHOUT 2. People in the organization dont live up

to the mission.

PURPOSE AND FIND AND ARTICULATE THE

VOICE OF THE ORGANIZATION

DIRECTION. Say the phrase mission statement, and

many people roll their eyes. Contests are
JOHN F. KENNEDY held online for the worst mission statement.
The bronze mission statement plaque
becomes a target for pigeons. According
As Sarah Sturtevant writes in her Marketing to Gallup, 70 percent of U.S. workers are
Masala blog, The mission of the dabbawalas disengaged unimpressed and uninterested
is not couched in flowery words like so in their companys mission.

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 BUILDING A WINNING CULTURE: LEAD WITH PURPOSE

Why are most mission statements just While your true mission will be unique, in broad
back room jokes? Because were trying to strokes they all sound something like this: We
engage peoples passions and talents in a are going where no other people can go
mission they have no passion for, and no because no other people are like us. No
involvement in. one else has the unique combination of
talent, passion, and conscience that drives
Yet, there is nothing more powerful than the us. No one else can make the contribution we
passions that drive people. Tap into those, can make.
and you create an unstoppable force. But
management often boils out all the passion THE JOB USED THE JOB THAT YOU
to reduce it to a mediocre mission statement, TO BE MUST DO NOW
and thats where cynicism comes from.
Put a framed Find and articulate
Shawn Moon, author of The Ultimate mission statement the voice of the
Competitive Advantage, says, I was working on the wall organization
with a group of leaders from an organization
Regularly evaluate
once, when I noticed that on the wall of their
the job your team
boardroom was a beautifully framed copy
is being hired to do
of their mission statement. The words were right now
nice and the sentiment meaningful. With the
leaders all sitting around the boardroom
table and the framed mission statement just The dabbawalas are like that. They are
a few feet away, I said, On the wall is your intensely proud of the service they have
mission statement. Dont look at it. Who can given for more than a century, a service no
tell me what it says? Crickets. Who can tell one can duplicate. Other great companies
me the gist of what it says? Again, crickets. are like that, too. Passion for the mission
What followed was an interesting discussion governs everything they do. According
on what a mission statement really is and to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook was not
how individuals and organizations bring originally created to be a company. It was
them to life. built to accomplish a social mission to make
the world more open and connected. The
company therefore draws people who have
the energy for that mission.

MISSION STATEMENT SAMPLES

To provide the public with the best Our purpose is to empower logistics
possible fire suppression, emergency, for companies and organizations
medical, and fire-prevention service, with winning aspirations who seek
and to treat all individuals to make a difference.
as if they were family. - SWEDISH SOFTWARE-
FIRE STATION 51 DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

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 BUILDING A WINNING CULTURE: LEAD WITH PURPOSE

So call it what you want. If people are

allergic to the term mission statement,
"VOICE" CONVERSATION
call it a mantra or a manifesto or a purpose
statement or the voice of the organization.
Whatever you call it, you need it badly. The TALENT
old paradigm of management is to put a
mission statement on the wall and forget
about it; the new paradigm of leadership
is to help people find their voice both
individually and collectively.
VOICE
PASSION Unique Personal NEED
Significance

DESIGNING AN ENGAGING MISSION

How do you design a mission or a sense of

purpose that will engage everyone?

CONSCIENCE
The mission should be the collective voice
of the people in your organization, not
just the leaders voice. The principle of no
involvement, no commitment clearly applies
to the creation of a mission statement. If you
want everyone to own the mission, it has to In other words, an engaging organizational
reflect their thinking, express their potential, voice or mission must appeal to peoples
and appeal to their souls. passionate interests, leverage their distinctive
talents, satisfy the conscience, and meet a
compelling market need. Its not easy to fulfill

VOICE LIES AT all of these criteria at the same time, but the
leaders job is to combine all those elements

THE NEXUS OF
of the organizations voice. Leaders who do
so tap into a miraculous power source.

TALENTPASSION Begin now to evaluate the mission of your

team or organization:
Talent. Are you leveraging the
CONSCIENCE irreplaceable talents of team members?
Passion. Do they approach their job

AND NEED. with energy and determination, or do

they just go through the motions?
Conscience. Is your organization
DR. STEPHEN R. COVEY doing what it should do? Are you
tapping into peoples innate desire
to be socially responsible?
How do you find this voice of the Need. What is the specific job your
organization? Stephen R. Covey said, internal and external customers are
Voice lies at the nexus of talent [what we do hiring you to do? The job you are
well], passion [what we love to do], being hired to do is very different
conscience [what we ought to do], and from a job description. It requires
need [what the world will pay us to do]. careful stakeholder analysis: What are
they trying to achieve through your

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 BUILDING A WINNING CULTURE: LEAD WITH PURPOSE

contribution? What are they willing to

Dabbawalas photograph is courtesy of and copyrighted by Firoze Shakir.

pay for? Are you in sync with the needs
of an ever-evolving market? Are you
staying on top of market hot spots, or
are they moving away from you?

In todays world, a leader has a moral

imperative to connect the why behind the
what to meaningfully engage their talent.
This is most powerfully accomplished by
thoughtful and deliberate design.

What you are really doing when you map out

your mission statement is telling your team
story. What anecdotes do you tell about your
THE DABBAWALAS TAKE PRIDE IN THEIR
own successes? Your failures? CONSISTENT QUALITY OF SERVICE. THEY
WEAR DISTINCTIVE WHITE CAPS AND
Imagine your mission statement as a lead TUNICS, AND THEIR SILVER BICYCLES ARE
story in the news what would be the
RECOGNIZED EVERYWHERE. THERE IS NO
headline? What would make the story
viral? It is the job of a leader to engage all OVERRELIANCE ON TECHNOLOGY, BUT A
stakeholders through a compelling strategic LOT OF RELIANCE ON A WINNING TEAM.
narrative on mission or a teams purpose?

GET ALIGNED TO THE MISSION way. Think of the core process in the
dabbawala organization. After collecting the
Whats the second reason people are cynical lunchboxes between nine and ten in the
about the company mission statement? The morning, they pack them onto trolleys and
company is so often misaligned with it. The push them to the railway stations. The boxes
grand pronouncements dont line up with the go by train to a central station for unloading,
things people are asked to do every day. In then color-coded so they end up in a similar
short, managers and leaders dont walk the destination as other boxes. At the receiving
talk. If the mission statement is about valuing station, the dabbawalas load the boxes onto
customers above all while management their trademark silver bicycles. They only
obsesses over everything but the customers, have their bicycles, the coded boxes, and
people simply disengage from the mission. the city train system as a resource. And then
in the afternoon they reverse the process,
Assuming you really want people to engage picking up the empty boxes and returning
with the mission, everything you do needs to them to the residents.
align with it. This means carefully examining
and possibly redesigning the core processes After studying the dabbawalas core
of the organization everything from processes, Forbes compared it to a Six Sigma
strategy to marketing to R&D to sales to process, which means the lunchbox men
compensation. Are any of these processes make only one error in every sixteen million
undermining the mission? transactions! According to the professionals
who evaluated their system, the dabbawalas
Every core process needs to support the process works so well because it is simple,
mission in a simple, visible, and consistent visible, and consistent.

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 BUILDING A WINNING CULTURE: LEAD WITH PURPOSE

Everyone, from the youngest dabbawala to network of trains stopped completely.

the chairman of the association, can describe So the dabbawalas made their way to
the simple process. The dabbawalas know checkpoints on foot, carrying the dabbas
exactly where they are going 100 percent of through torrential rains and floods. Few if
the time. any customers were missed. Uninterrupted
service is that important to the dabbawalas.
The system is visible. The lunchbox code
contains the entire work process, from start What about your core processes? What
to finish. A few symbols on each lid indicate could you do to simplify your processes?
exactly where the lunchbox came from and Make them more visible? Make them
where it is going. more consistent with the mission of the
organization and consistent in execution?
And consistency is, of course, the hallmark In the end, people will never engage with
of the dabbawalas service. You can count a mission that is not a mission, that is
on them without question. The dabbawalas meaningless corporate-speak. And if theyre
take pride in their consistent quality of not asked to live by it, the mission doesnt
service. They wear distinctive white caps matter anyway.
and tunics, and their silver bicycles are
recognized everywhere. There is no But if you want to engage the full power of
overreliance on technology, but a lot of your people, involve them in finding your
reliance on a winning team. organizations voice. Then let that voice
govern everything you do.

IN THE END, PEOPLE LEADING WITH PURPOSE: ACTION STEPS

WILL NEVER
Here are the key steps to lead your team or
organization with purpose. Involve your team
in discussing these questions. The outcomes

ENGAGE WITH A should be (1) an engaging mission statement

and (2) core processes that clearly support
that mission.
MISSION THAT IS Step 1: Find the voice of your team.
NOT A MISSION, THAT Do we have a written team mission?
Does it inspire our energy and

IS MEANINGLESS determination, or are we just going

through the motions?

CORPORATE-
Does our mission leverage the
irreplaceable talents of each team
member? Do we even know what those

SPEAK. talents are?

Does our mission meet the demands of
conscience? Are we socially responsible?
What is the specific job our customers
The passion of the dabbawalas means they are hiring us to do? Is it changing?
never let down a customer. When a disastrous Who are our most important
monsoon struck Mumbai in 2005, the citys customers and stakeholders?

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 BUILDING A WINNING CULTURE: LEAD WITH PURPOSE

What are their most important goals? What do we need to make our processes:
What unique capabilities do we bring Simple?
to help them meet those goals? What Visible?
are they hiring us to do or provide? Consistent?
Given our answers to these questions,
how can we refine our mission or Learn more about the second key practice
purpose statement? to engage your people in our next white
paper, Building a Winning Culture: Execute
Step 2: Align with the mission. with Excellence.
What are our core processes?
Do our core processes clearly
support the mission?

Ready to build a winning culture in your organization? Contact us at 1-888-868-1776 or

visit w w w . f r a n k l i n c o v e y m e . c o m .

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Shawn D. Moon Sue Dathe-Douglass
Executive Vice Global Vice President,
President, Leadership Leadership, Sales and
and Strategic Accounts Delivery Effectiveness
FranklinCovey FranklinCovey

For over 30 years, Shawn D. Moon has Sue Dathe-Douglass draws on more than
worked with clients across the globe, bringing 30 years of organizational and leadership
experience in leadership and management, experience, and is a catalyst for high
sales and marketing, program development, performance and engagement at all levels
and consulting services to help them achieve of the organization. Sue joined FranklinCovey
remarkable results. His deep knowledge and in 1996 as a Leadership Delivery Consultant
robust experience inspires others to become responsible for designing, developing, and
leaders through personal effectiveness delivering customized leadership engagement
and execution. Shawn is the author or co- solutions that met the unique needs of her
author of several books, Talent Unleashed: many clients. She is the co-author of The
3 Leadership Conversations to Ignite the Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Why
Unlimited Potential in People, The Ultimate Your People Make All the Difference and
Competitive Advantage: Why Your People 6 Practices You Need to Engage Them.
Make All the Difference and 6 Practices You
Need to Engage Them, and A Winning Culture
in Government: The Ultimate Mission Essential.

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