[MUSIC]. We need to start by talking about mission and its relationship to value. They're two different concepts, but each have a very close connection to the other. Mission statements typically explain what you're working on, how you plan to do the work, and why it matters. Mission statements can range from short, powerful, convincing statements to long, flowering, confusing claims. The value proposition is a little bit different than the mission statement. The value proposition explains why the world looks different as a result of the work you're going to do. It explains how the world is going to actually feel and look better or different because of the contribution you're proposing to make. So mission statements set the frame, they have a lot of explanation typically in them, and embedded within them usually somewhere is the value proposition, the claim about how the wold is better or different. Crafting a mission statement is a complex, long, painful process. I don't wanna get into it in enormous detail today. But what I wanna do is, I wanna explain that good mission statements can be powerful generators of clear senses about what the value proposition will be in the organization. A good mission statement has one sentence to it. It contains no jargon. It's something that can be expressed quickly and easily to people from all different walks of life. It should be memorable. It's something that when you hear it, you remember it. It should differentiate, it should show why you're different and how you're different. And most importantly, a mission statement makes a connection. It tells something to the world about what you're doing in a way that makes them care, connects to them. Let's look at the couple examples, because the range of mission statements is enormous. Let's take two examples from the world of philanthropy. The mission statement of the Rockefeller Foundation is, on its surface, very simple. It's to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world. That was their mission statement for many, many years. But recently they've added to it. And they added the following. We pursue this mission through dual goals: advancing inclusive economies that expand opportunities for more broadly shared prosperity, and building resilience by enabling people, communities and institutions to be prepared for, withstand, and emerge stronger from shocks and chronic stresses. We could argue about which of these mission statements is better, the original one, which is very short and concise, or the more recent version, which has a lot more material in it about the methods. But the bottom line is that a good mission statement is tight, and this one has a lot of moving pieces in it. Let's compare it to another foundation's missions statement. A more recent foundation, the Skoll foundation. Its mission statement reads as follows. The Skoll Foundation drives large scale change by investing in, connecting, and celebrating social entrepreneurs and the innovators who help them solve the world's most pressing problems. In some ways, this is a very clear powerful statement about what this organization's all about. And if you compare it to the Rockefeller mission statement, which has a lot of complex jargon in it, in some ways, I find this to be much, much tighter and more compelling. But the bottom line is, when you start to construct a mission statement, you need to find a way to boil down to the most essential elements what it is you're trying to accomplish. Now, if you had a mission statement and you had a direction, the big question is, once you have those words etched out, should it be cast in stone? Should it remain fixed? Should the mission be sacrosanct and be the thing that drives everything else forward? I would argue that a mission should be a touchstone, but not an unchanging cornerstone. It cannot be forever untouched. It cannot survive over the long run without some revisiting and revising. The reason is that the world around you is changing. It's constantly changing. The needs and interests of people around you are changing. The mission has to reflect the world. And the idea, and it was an early idea in the nonprofit field, the idea that the mission was holy, sacrosanct, and untouchable, I think, has been proven totally impossible and wrong. We're now the point where we have to and we do understand mission as being contingent and variable, not changed at whim, but changed as a result of the world changing. And that's the key to good mission management. It involves seeing the core and making adjustments as needed to it. Let's look at how wildly and broadly a mission can change, and one case, it's led to incredible success. The World Economic Forum is enormous operation in Switzerland that today draws people from all over the globe, has enormous resources, enormous publicity. But if you look at the first mission statement of the World Economic Forum, it looks a lot different than today's. In 1976, the mission statement read, The European Management Forum is an independent, self-supporting, non-profit foundation dedicated to the strategic needs of Europe's leading business decision makers. The European Management Forum helps European enterprise leaders to correctly evaluate and master the problems of the rapidly changing corporate world. Not only was the name of the organization different, but their focus was really on business education, on management training. If we move forward to 1983, the mission has changed. Our mission is to provide the world economic community with a continuous, independent, and informal forum, where those who exercise the highest responsibilities in economic affairs can meet to exchange information, opinions and experiences, to propose actions and elaborate projects, and to advance their common efforts for worldwide economic progress and cooperation. That's a big step from 1976. If we roll forward, all the way to 1991, the purpose of the World Economic Forum is to contribute to the growth of worldwide prosperity through effective economic cooperation and the strengthening of entrepreneurial dynamism. The foundation pursues its aim by creating and stimulating personalized global interactions among leaders from business. It keeps changing. By 1993, the World Economic Forum is the world's foremost institution integrating leaders from business, government, and the sciences into global partnerships for economic and social progress. By 1997, the mission statement had changed once again. The World Economic Forum is today the foremost international membership organization integrating leaders from business, government, academia and the media in a partnership committed to improving the state of the world. Its mission is to act as a bridge-builder at a highest level inside the business community and between the business community and governments. The forum seeks to create, in a club-like atmosphere, new business opportunities and to address in an action-oriented way the key economic, social, and political issues on the global agenda. We are convinced that confronting the major challenges of the end of the century requires a strong partnership between business and governments with a contribution of the best minds in academia and the media. That's a huge leap from where we started. But the bottom line is, the statement of what this organization is trying to accomplish is changes radically over time. It starts off with a little idea about business education for business leaders, then expands into government and business, then goes broader into academics, media, and beyond, and science. The organization is constantly expanding and changing its claim about value and mission. Is this a problem? Not really. What it does is reflect the fact that the conditions on the ground change, that the organization sees new opportunities, sees its position differently, and is making adjustments. Today, the mission statement is even more different than before. It has a whole bunch of new language in it. Involves an international institution committed to improving the state of the world through public-private cooperation, and then it goes on to detail a whole series of other things it goes after, from engaging in business political academic leaders, to serving and building sustained communities, to delivering unique value to partners and members. All the way to striving in its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest, while upholding the highest standards of governance. The reason I'd like to share these mission statements with you is this is a wildly successful organization. And it did not create a mission statement years ago and simply doggedly try to drag the world to that mission statement. What it did was start in one place, understand something that might be valuable in the European context, and then as its context changed, as the world around it changed, its mission and scope and value proposition also changed. It emerged over time as conditions on the ground changed. So when you think about mission, think about it as something that is important, that does express the highest and greatest aspirations. But that has to be flexible. Now, in the case of the arts, there's something also very tricky about mission. It's different than in fields like human service and health, because in the world that you're operating in, there's both artistic value and it has its own logic and integrity to it, and then there's community and public value also at stake. I recognize a need to break apart these two areas, to treat them as different, because they are different. But what I'd ideally like you to think about is how could you do both? How could you create artistic value of the highest quality and community value, and deliver something that the people around you actually value and want? Now, sometimes artistic and community value are going to be in tension. That's inevitable, it's gonna happen. What I think is important at the start is for you to think about the tradeoffs between these two areas, and to think about the most sustainable, most viable mix of the two. I think the days are gone when we can just say that we're going to keep these two worlds of art and community value completely separate. I think we need to think strategically about bringing them together. So, this gives you a starting point to this question of mission. I'd like you to see it as contingent and as changing as part of the strategy calculus you need to engage in regularly. In our section I'm gonna introduce a tool that's going to allow you to start to understand how mission relates to both capacity and support externally, and how those three elements together constitute that kinda critical strategy frame for you and your organization. We want you to hold on to what matters most to you artistically, but at the same time, we want you to think of about ways in which you can produce more value, and greater public value for the community around you. [MUSIC]
