Mission Statements Quotes

He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask,” Musk said. “Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.” The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. “The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment,

Without a mission statement, you may get to the top of the ladder and then realize it was leaning against the wrong building!

Your mission statement says Galer Street is based on global "connectitude." (You people don't just think outside the box, you think outside the dictionary!)

Culture is not like a mission statement; you can’t just set it up and have it last forever. There’s a saying in the military that if you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard. This is also true of culture—if you see something off-culture and ignore it, you’ve created a new culture.

Well-defined mission and vision statements are going to show your audience what your business stands for and how it is going to benefit them.

I have learned that I will not change the world, Jesus will do that. I can however, change the world for one person. I can change the world for fourteen little girls and for four hundred schoolchildren and for a sick and dying grandmother and for a malnourished, neglected, abused five-year old. And if one persons sees the love of Christ in me, it is worth every minute. In fact, it is worth spending my life for.

Your Mission Statement is your reason for existence. It tells your customers what you want to be held accountable to.

...Chanel didn't start out with a mission statement, nor a corporate vision, nor a roadmap for success, nor timeline for achieving her goals, nor an action item list, nor any of those other high-falutin' concepts we associate with mega modern multinational success stories.

Imagine your customer is a hitchhiker. You pull over to give him a ride, and the one burning question on his mind is simply Where are you going? But as he approaches, you roll down the window and start talking about your mission statement, or how your grandfather built this car with his bare hands, or how your road-trip playlist is all 1980s alternative. This person doesn’t care.

The weird thing is that the more efficient, on task, on goal you are with your time, the more energy you have. Working with no traction, or for that matter simply wasting a day, does not relax you, it drains you.// Strange as it may seem, when you work a daily plan in pursuit of your written goals that flow from your mission statement born of your vision for living your dreams, you are energized after a tough long day.

Niko caught my hand and slapped it lightly down on the bar. “Pistol whipping elderly women isn’t precisely our mission statement, Cal.” I hadn’t been going to pistol-whip her. Yell at her a little more, then pick her up and toss her out into the street. Some risk of a broken hip there, but that wasn’t pistol-whipping… unless she tried to come back in.

He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask,” Musk said. “Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.” The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. “The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment,” he said.

Maybe being wrong is not the same as being bad, I thought, not a sign your insides were rotten. Maybe you can still be a decent-ish person, a person with a personal mission statement, a person who aspires to be someone habitually good and highly effective, and fuck up.

A Mission Statement is your purpose, and a Vision Statement is what you are driving to.

When you live out of your memory, you focus on the past. When you live out of your imagination, you focus on the future.

In my experience, an effective mission statement basically answers one question: How do we intend to win in this business?

Our mission statement is 'Secure, contain, protect'. Somewhere down the line we really should look into adding 'and keep as many human beings alive as possible' to that.

We believe in an aristocracy... Not an aristocracy of power, based on rank or wealth, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Our members are found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between us when we meet... We represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. We're an invincible army, but not a victorious one. We've had different names throughout history, but all the words that describe us are false and all attempts to organize us fail. Right now we're called V.F.D., but all our schisms and arguments might cause us to disappear. It won't matter. People like us always slip through the net. Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.

What lies behind us is nothing compared to what lies within us and ahead of us.

Six Strategy Traps 1) The do-it-all strategy: failing to make choices, and making everything a priority. Remember, strategy is choice. 2) The Don Quixote strategy: attacking competitive "walled cities" or taking on the strongest competitor first, head-to-head. Remember, where to play is your choice. Pick somewhere you can have a choice to win. 3) The Waterloo Strategy: starting wars on multiple fronts with multiple competitors at the same time. No company can do everything well. If you try to do so, you will do everything weakly. 4) The something-for-everyone strategy: attempting to capture all consumer or channel or geographic or category segments at once. Remember, to create value, you have to choose to serve some constituents really well and not worry about the others. 5) The dreams-that-never-come-true strategy: developing high-level aspirations and mission statements that never get translated into concrete where-to-play and how-to-win choices, core capabilities, and management systems. Remember that aspirations are not strategy. Strategy is the answer to all five questions in the choice cascade. 6) The program-of-the-month strategy: settling for generic industry strategies, in which all competitors are chasing the same customers, geographies, and segments in the same way. The choice cascade and activity system that supports these choices should be distinctive. The more your choices look like those of your competitors, the less likely you will ever win.

I envision a world in which the vast majority of us are actively striving toward our potential by serving others through mediums we are most passionate.

Really, his question had been more of a mission statement, of which she was the mission.

The mission statement provides the WHY that inspires the HOW.

A nice manner and a level head would surely get you much further. But that didn't cut much with the big cheeses, who liked flakey mission statements and loud, confident remarks.

He noticed buildings came with mission statements these days. It really knocked you back on your arse to realise that inanimate structures had their lives more together than you did.

Driving a positive, high-performing culture requires more than words. After all, everyone has a mission statement, but only the great organizations also have people who are on a mission.

[Building purpose is...] not as simple as carving a mission statement in granite or encouraging everyone to recite a hymnal of catchphrases. It's a never-ending process of trying, failing, reflecting and above all learning. High-purpose environments don't descend on groups from on high; they are dug out of the ground, over and over, as a group navigates it's problems together and evolves to meet the challenges of a fast-changing world.

I feel that if my only audience is the Christian audience, then I've failed in my mission

Whatever you can do, or dream, begin it! For boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

In order to live a fulfilled life, do not focus on the size of your audience; focus instead on leaving an impact on the circle of influence God has given you.

If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you give your life to? If you knew you didn’t have to work for a living, what would you give your life to?

If we're not careful, our individualistic assumptions about church can lead us to think of the church as something like a health club. We're members because we believe in the mission statement and want to be a part of the action. As long as the church provides the services I want, I'll stick around. But when I no longer approve of the vision, or am no longer "being fed," I'm out the door. This is not biblical Christianity. Scripture is clear that when we become Christians, we become-permanently and spiritually-a part of the church. We become part of the family of God, with all the responsibilities and expectations that word connotes in the non-Western world.

The answer to the question, 'What should I believe, and why should I believe it?' is generally a scientific one. Believe a proposition because it is well supported by theory and evidence; believe it because it has been experimentally verified; believe it because a generation of smart people have tried their best to falsify it and failed; believe it because it is true (or seems so). This is a norm of cognition as well as the core of any scientific mission statement. As far as our understanding of the world is concerned--there are no facts without values.

The vision is the public statement of the founder’s intent, WHY the company exists. It is literally the vision of a future that does not yet exist. The mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principles—HOW the company intends to create that future. When both of those things are stated clearly, the WHY-type and the HOW-type are both certain about their roles in the partnership. Both are working together with clarity of purpose and a plan to get there. For it to work, however, it requires more than a set of skills, it requires trust. As

Your mission statement, vision statement, core values, and service standards provide a clear focus for all while keeping your team humble and hungry. It creates that family environment in which your employees enjoy coming to work and dealing with the challenges they face each day.

Every day, librarians enforce copyright policies that we may disagree with and that, in some ways, run contrary to the values of our profession. Every day, librarians must decide between a desire to preserve the privacy of our community members and offering services our communities demand. Every day, librarians must make a choice between doing what’s easy, doing what’s right, and determining what’s right in the first place. No textbook or mission statement or policy document can relieve us of the necessity to make those decisions, nor remove the complexity of those decisions. That’s why we are librarians and why librarians are professionals, not clerks. That’s why we are stewards within the communities we serve, not servants to them. That’s why we must shape the missions and the work of our organizations and communities, and not simply accept them.

(This is how the iron law of bureaucracy installs itself at the heart of an institution. Most of the activities of any bureaucracy are devoted not to the organization’s ostensible goals, but to ensuring that the organization survives: because if they aren’t, the bureaucracy has a life expectancy measured in days before some idiot decision maker decides that if it’s no use to them they can make political hay by destroying it. It’s no consolation that some time later someone will realize that an organization was needed to carry out the original organization’s task, so a replacement is created: you still lost your job and the task went undone. The only sure way forward is to build an agency that looks to its own survival before it looks to its mission statement. Just another example of evolution in action.)

Your mission statement says Galer Street is based on global “connectitude.” (You people don’t just think outside the box, you think outside the dictionary!)

It's about making a choice to make your marriage a priority, to, kind of, put that at the top of the page, as your mission statement or something.

Your mission statement outlines why your company exists. It doesn’t have to be all fancy-pants, just a clear statement of what you do.

Room” is the wrong word. It’s not a room—it’s a mission statement.

Mission statements are long, dull, and forgettable.

No software, seminar, cool notebook, smartphone, or even personal mission statement will give you more than twenty-four hours in a day,

REDO THE MISSION STATEMENT AND THE BUSINESS PLAN EVERY THREE MONTHS

company culture is not created through mission statements, slogans, or a set of written values. It is a product of leaders’ interactions with their team.

Think about taking a trip on an airplane. Before taking off, the pilot has a very clear destination in mind, which hopefully coincides with yours, and a flight plan to get there. The plane takes off at the appointed hour toward that predetermined destination. But in fact, the plane is off course at least 90 percent of the time. Weather conditions, turbulence, and other factors cause it to get off track. However, feedback is given to the pilot constantly, who then makes course corrections and keeps coming back to the exact flight plan, bringing the plane back on course. And often, the plane arrives at the destination on time. It’s amazing. Think of it. Leaving on time, arriving on time, but off course 90 percent of the time. If you can create this image of an airplane, a destination, and a flight plan in your mind, then you understand the purpose of a personal mission statement. It is the picture of where you want to end up—that is, your destination is the values you want to live your life by. Even if you are off course much or most of the time but still hang on to your sense of hope and your vision, you will eventually arrive at your destination. You will arrive at your destination and usually on time. That’s the whole point—we just get back on course.

To work, your mission statement has to be all about the pain points (in other words, “what keeps your customers up at night?”) of your readers and followers. If it isn’t, it simply won’t work.

The principles you live by create the world you live in. So when you change the principles you live by, you can change your world. Your mission statement serves to summarize the principles you want to live by.

Here, we want to break that mission statement down into smaller chunks, dividing up the impossible into a long series of difficult but doable goals that, if accomplished, render said impossible much more probable.

My friend John Maxwell says a budget (for your money) is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. Managing time is the same; you will either tell your day what to do or you will wonder where it went. The weird thing is that the more efficient, on task, on goal you are with your time, the more energy you have. Working with no traction, or for that matter simply wasting away a day, does not relax you, it drains you. Have you ever taken a day off, slept late, wandered around with no plan or thought for the day, watched some stupid rerun of a bad movie as you surfed the TV, and at the end of your great day off found yourself absolutely exhausted? Strange as it may seem, when you work a daily plan in pursuit of your written goals that flow from your mission statement born of your vision for living your dreams, you are energized after a tough long day.

The realms of dating, marriage, and sex are all marketplaces, and we are the products. Some may bristle at the idea of people as products on a marketplace, but this is an incredibly prevalent dynamic. Consider the labor marketplace, where people are also the product. Just as in the labor marketplace, one party makes an offer to another, and based on the terms of this offer, the other person can choose to accept it or walk. What makes the dating market so interesting is that the products we are marketing, selling, buying, and exchanging are essentially our identities and lives. As with all marketplaces, every item in stock has a value, and that value is determined by its desirability. However, the desirability of a product isn’t a fixed thing—the desirability of umbrellas increases in areas where it is currently raining while the desirability of a specific drug may increase to a specific individual if it can cure an illness their child has, even if its wider desirability on the market has not changed. In the world of dating, the two types of desirability we care about most are: - Aggregate Desirability: What the average demand within an open marketplace would be for a relationship with a particular person. - Individual Desirability: What the desirability of a relationship with an individual is from the perspective of a specific other individual. Imagine you are at a fish market and deciding whether or not to buy a specific fish: - Aggregate desirability = The fish’s market price that day - Individual desirability = What you are willing to pay for the fish Aggregate desirability is something our society enthusiastically emphasizes, with concepts like “leagues.” Whether these are revealed through crude statements like, “that guy's an 8,” or more politically correct comments such as, “I believe she may be out of your league,” there is a tacit acknowledgment by society that every individual has an aggregate value on the public dating market, and that value can be judged at a glance. When what we have to trade on the dating market is often ourselves, that means that on average, we are going to end up in relationships with people with an aggregate value roughly equal to our own (i.e., individuals “within our league”). Statistically speaking, leagues are a real phenomenon that affects dating patterns. Using data from dating websites, the University of Michigan found that when you sort online daters by desirability, they seem to know “their place.” People on online dating sites almost never send a message to someone less desirable than them, and on average they reach out to prospects only 25% more desirable than themselves. The great thing about these markets is how often the average desirability of a person to others is wildly different than their desirability to you. This gives you the opportunity to play arbitrage with traits that other people don’t like, but you either like or don’t mind. For example, while society may prefer women who are not overweight, a specific individual within the marketplace may prefer obese women, or even more interestingly may have no preference. If a guy doesn’t care whether his partner is slim or obese, then he should specifically target obese women, as obesity lowers desirability on the open marketplace, but not from his perspective, giving him access to women who are of higher value to him than those he could secure within an open market.

At the end of the day, effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible. They give people a clear sense of the direction to profitability and the inspiration to feel they are part of something big and important.

Instead of rules or even strategy, the key to success is culture. Whether we are talking about our moral compass, our world view, or our sensibility and taste, the way that we set these compasses is through the culture that we create and how we communicate that culture through events, e-mail, meetings, blog posts, the rules that we make, and even the music that we play. It is more of a system of mythologies than some sort of mission statement or slogan. —Joi Ito

And this happened all over, in every working group, idiosyncratic professors from two dozen academic departments all fighting for explicit mission-statement representation. So, in the end, it was pretty easy to understand why the mission statement came out looking the way it did: a compound-complex, multi-semicoloned, many-branching grammatical nightmare that forced the English department to stage a collective symbolic walkout when the faculty senate approved it. Since

We’re the underground resistance for having a good time.” I crack up, and even Parker smiles. “That’s the best mission statement I’ve ever heard,” I tell Katie. “Obviously,” she says. “Because we’re the best secret club ever. We’re the queens club. And we’ve got this.

Although most people believe they are ethical, few have actually written down their own code of ethics. Don’t rely solely on the mission statement or compliance manual supplied by your firm. Instead, identify three or four main principles that will guide your personal behavior over your professional career—and write them down. For each principle, think about why you believe it is important. Then think about a situation in which you would find it difficult to abide by that principle, and consider how you would address the challenge.

So we did what we always do when there is dissent: nothing. We believe blindly in the virtues of dissent. We don’t want a crowd of brainwashed workers. We don’t want them to sing company songs, memorize company mission statements, and learn to speak only when spoken to.

People act in ways to maximize their self-interest within a company, so create incentives that align employee's objectives with the organization's mission statement. Reward compliance with core values as much as profitability, especially in the face of competitive pressures.

Want to see a great company story? Read Jeff Bezos’s three-page letter he wrote to shareholders in 1997. In telling Amazon’s story in this extended form—not as a mission statement, not as a tagline—Jeff got all the people who mattered on the same page as to what Amazon was about.

Writing down this mission statement is also a great way to "wake the page". That's the term I use to describe the act of marking the page for the first time. It's the moment when thought transcends the distance between our inner and outer world, and we breathe life into our ideas.

What a joy life is when you have made a close working partnership with Nature, helping her to produce for the benefit of mankind new forms, colors, and perfumes in flowers which were never known before; fruits in form, size, and flavor never before seen on this globe." -Luther Burbank.

Throw in the valley’s rich history of computer science breakthroughs, and you’ve set the stage for the geeky-hippie hybrid ideology that has long defined Silicon Valley. Central to that ideology is a wide-eyed techno-optimism, a belief that every person and company can truly change the world through innovative thinking. Copying ideas or product features is frowned upon as a betrayal of the zeitgeist and an act that is beneath the moral code of a true entrepreneur. It’s all about “pure” innovation, creating a totally original product that generates what Steve Jobs called a “dent in the universe.” Startups that grow up in this kind of environment tend to be mission-driven. They start with a novel idea or idealistic goal, and they build a company around that. Company mission statements are clean and lofty, detached from earthly concerns or financial motivations.

It's important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I'm interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It's also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings. "Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naïveté," the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova recently remarked. And Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, early on described the movement's mission as to "Provide hope and inspiration for collective action to build collective power to achieve collective transformation, rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams." It's a statement that acknowledges that grief and hope can coexist.

No one likes to feel used. When the perceived focus becomes the content over the person, people feel used. When teachers are valued only for the test scores of their students, they feel used. When administrators are "successful" only when they achieve "highly effective school" status, they feel used. Eventually, "used" people lose joy in learning and teaching. Curriculum does not teach; teachers do. Standards don't encourage; administrators do. Peaceable schools value personnel and students for who they are as worthy human beings. ... If your mission statement says you care, then specific practices of care should be habits within your school.

Mission and vision statements are elements of strategy, but they aren’t enough. They offer no guide to productive action and no explicit road map to the desired future. They don’t include choices about what businesses to be in and not to be in. There’s no focus on sustainable competitive advantage or the building blocks of value creation.

In short, our mission is to advance reasoned and compassionate politics for all sentient beings.

Don’t live life anyhow, else you get anywhere. Plan your life somehow and you can get somewhere. A slow plan is better than no plan.

Entrepreneurs don’t ask for permission. They act per a mission.

Be Proactive. People are responsible for their own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than

The thing I learned is that you don’t invent your mission, you detect it. You uncover it, as it were.

My mission is to be a positive, uplifting, constructive, and healing influence in the lives of those I touch.

We are a vertically integrated publishing house that equips readers to make positive changes in their lives and in the world around them. Microcosm emphasizes skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books and zines about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice.

I envision a world in which the vast majority of us are actively striving toward our potential as human beings by spending our lives serving others through mediums we are most passionate.

The Los Angeles Public Library provides free and easy access to information, ideas, books and technology that enrich, educate and empower every individual in our city's diverse communities.

Most Western managers believe that long-term success flows from a state of stability, harmony, predictability, discipline, and consensus-a state that I refer to as stable equilibrium. This belief leads them to demand general prescriptions that they can immediately convert into successful action. The most popular prescriptions are to formulate a vision of an organization's future state, to prepare long-term plans to realize that vision, to set strategic milestones and monitor achievements against those plans, to write mission statements and persuade people to share the same culture, to encourage widespread participation and consensus in decision making, and to install control systems that allow top executives to set the organization's direction and stay in command.

This is essentially how company mission statements are created, and why you need not give a fuck about memorizing or adhering to them. They are the products of untold man-hours of "brainstorming" and "focus-grouping" resulting in the blandest, most generalized, least-potentially-offensive, frequently asinine copy that could have been created by any group of monkeys in any boardroom in America.

Don't promote yourself as a country of constitutionality and compassion if you honestly believe that putting people in prison and treating them like animals is justified. Stop all the hype that we live in a free and democratic society. I used to ramble on about the same stuff. But now—are we really a country that believes in fairness and compassion? Are we really a country that treats people fairly? I've met good men—yes, good men—in prison who made mistakes out of stupidity or ignorance, greed, or just bad judgment, but they did not need to be sent to prison to be punished; eighteen months for catching too many fish; two years for inflating income on a mortgage application; three months for selling a whale's tooth on eBay; fifteen years for a first-time nonviolent drug conspiracy in which no drugs were found or seized. There are thousands of people like these in our prisons today, costing American taxpayers billions of dollars when these individuals could be punished in smarter, alternative ways. Our courts are overpunishing decent people who make mistakes, and our prisons have no rewards or incentives for good behavior. In this alone criminal justice and prison systems contradict their own mission statements (244).

Billy's native arrogance might well have been a gift of miffed genes, then come to splendid definition through the tests to which a street like Broadway puts a young man on the make: tests designed to refine a breed, enforce a code, exclude all simps and gumps, and deliver into the city's life a man worthy of functioning in this age of nocturnal supremacy. Men like Billy Phelan, forged in the brass of Broadway, send, in the time of their splendor, telegraphic statements of mission: I, you bums, am a winner. And that message, however devoid of Christ-like other-cheekery, dooms the faint-hearted Scottys of the night, who must sludge along, never knowing how it feels to spill over with the small change of sassiness, how it feels to leave the spillover on the floor, more where that came from, pal. Leave it for the sweeper.

I had worked for a number of organizations that struggled to create meaningful opportunities for people of color, but I had never heard anyone make an overt case in favor of assimilation - particularly at an organization that promoted diversity in its mission statements and messaging. Granted, many people of color on our team had grown suspicious of those statements, suspecting that the organization wanted our racial diversity without our diversity of thought and culture.

Project your “brand” to be remarkable and memorable. Whether through a positioning statement, product placement, advertising campaign, service, a logo, mission, or message, your brand is what makes you and/or your company remarkable—or not.

It identifies where you want to be, and, in the process, helps you determine where you are. It gives you important information on how to get there, and it tells you when you have arrived. It unifies your efforts and energy. It gives meaning and purpose to all you do. And it can finally translate itself into daily activities so that you are proactive, you are in charge of your life, you are making happen each day the things that will enable you to fulfill your personal mission statement.

Keeping a personal journal empowers you to see and improve, on a day-by-day basis, the way you’re developing and using your endowments. Because writing truly imprints the brain, it also helps you remember and apply the things you’re trying to do. In addition, it gives you a powerful contextual tool. As you take occasion—perhaps on a mission statement renewal retreat—to read over your experiences of past weeks, months, or years, you gain invaluable insight into repeating patterns and themes in your life.

Most frequently, groups are formed and assigned the task of setting goals for a specific part of the strategic plan. One group might be working on the mission statement, another on curriculum, another on instruction, another on technology, another on facilities, and so forth. Groups work simultaneously with little communication between them before they present their recommendations to the total group. How can they do this??? Won’t the mission be a strong influence on curriculum, won’t a new vision have a strong influence on facilities, etc.?

Think about taking a trip on an airplane. Before taking off, the pilot has a very clear destination in mind, which hopefully coincides with yours, and a flight plan to get there. The plane takes off at the appointed hour toward that predetermined destination. But in fact, the plane is off course at least 90 percent of the time. Weather conditions, turbulence, and other factors cause it to get off track. However, feedback is given to the pilot constantly, who then makes course corrections and keeps coming back to the exact flight plan, bringing the plane back on course. And often, the plane arrives at the destination on time. It’s amazing. Think of it. Leaving on time, arriving on time, but off course 90 percent of the time. If you can create this image of an airplane, a destination, and a flight plan in your mind, then

The old dragon had not been enthusiastic about the mission when Eragon told him about it, but neither had he opposed it. After discussing various contingencies, Glaedr had said: Beware of the shadows, Eragon. Strange things lurk in dark places, which, Eragon thought, was hardly an encouraging statement.

At the Lausanne missions gathering in 2010, John Piper made the statement that “we should care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering.” He chose the word “care” quite carefully. He didn’t want to say we should do something about all suffering, because we can’t do something about everything. But we can care.

The evil formed a gang. No speeches, no debates—the most violent took charge. The rest followed. The good formed a committee. They voted. The kindest speaker became the leader. He had never fought, but he said all the right things. The strongest fighter in the group stayed quiet, confused. The gang sharpened their weapons. The committee wrote a mission statement. The gang trained. The committee discussed ethics. The gang attacked. The committee released a joint statement. Later, the battlefield was empty. The gang celebrated. The good gathered to “discuss learnings.” Evil picked its strongest. Good picked its most reasonable.

We know from several statements of Knecht's that he wanted to write the former Master's biography, but official duties left him no time for such a task. He had learned to curb his own wishes. Once he remarked to one of his tutors: "It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live. But I was exactly the same when I was still a student. We study and work, don't waste much time, and think we may rightly call ourselves industrious–but we are scarcely conscious of all we could do, all that we might make of our freedom. Then we suddenly receive a call from the hierarchy, we are needed, are given a teaching assignment, a mission, a post, and from then on move up to a higher one, and unexpectedly find ourselves caught in a network of duties that tightens the more we try to move inside it. All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours. That is well; one would not want it to be different. But if we ever think, between classrooms, Archives, secretariat, consulting room, meetings, and official journeys–if we ever think of the freedom we possessed and have lost, the freedom for self-chosen tasks, for unlimited, far-flung studies, we may well feel the greatest yearning for those days, and imagine that if we ever had such freedom again we would fully enjoy its pleasures and potentialities.

Identifying what your group can do well, is passionate about, and is needed—that's the sweet spot. That's your mission. Your mission should be brief and clear, so that you can refer to it at moments of decision, at forks in your organizational road. It should resonate with everyone in the organization, a compelling statement that makes everyone want to show up and kick ass.

THE SIX-HOUR SEMINAR that Jack was forced to attend at the beginning of each new semester had been called Orientation until a few years ago, when the university changed the seminar’s name to Onboarding. The name change coincided with a revamp of the orientation curriculum, which had bloated into this all-day human resources horror during which members of the HR team attempted, at unmerciful length, to “socialize the mission statement’s DNA,” is how they put it. They were referring to the many-planked mission statement the university had spent two years and countless consultant dollars developing in a campus-wide effort to express everything the university did in just one sentence. This was the brainchild of the university’s new CFO, who told the faculty in all seriousness that developing a mission statement that captured everything the university did in just one sentence was akin to their “moonshot,” and he asked for their help in this endeavor “not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” Why the university needed to corral its collective intelligence and creativity and energy for the task of expressing everything it did in just one sentence was a mystery to most faculty, but this did not stop their administrator bosses from enthusiastically assigning them to “mission statement working groups” so that they could have a voice (unpaid) in developing this one magical sentence, this one statement that would distill everything everyone did into a phrase ideally small enough for letterhead.

Your uncle is in parking garages because they fund his more important work.... Which is to seek out, fund and create the sort of technologies and services that bring disruptive change to existing industrial and social paradigms, and offer them, on a confidential basis, to interested businesses an d governments. That's a great mission statement... but it doesn't say what he actually DID. HE WAS A VILLIAN, Hera typed. I stared at what she had written and looked back at Morrison. We don't use that word in public, and also, yes, she said. And this meeting that the stabber had the invite for, I asked. Villain conference, Morrison said. Think of Davos, except they don't pretend they're helping people. And I'd be going there. Yes, after we visit the volcano lair.

The Three Lives We all lead three lives: our public life, our private life, and our deep inner life. Our public life takes place in a community setting, where we interact with others. Our private life is away from the public—we may be alone, with a friend, or with family members. But our deep inner life is our most significant life. It is where our heart is. It’s where we have the capacity to explore our own motives, to examine our own thoughts and desires, and to analyze our problems and our needs. We can go into this deep private life—we could call it a secret life—even when we are in a public or a private setting. Our secret life is where we are able to tap into the power of the four human endowments: self-awareness, conscience, imagination, and independent will. When you are dealing with the development of a personal mission statement, you need to go into the deep inner or secret life, which influences the other two. It is the part of you where you decide the most fundamental issues of your life. As the psalmist put it: “Search your own heart with all diligence, for out of it flows the issues of your life.” It truly is a secret life. No one knows the thoughts and intents of your heart. You alone have that awareness, and you can step in on your own deep inner life; you can examine, explore, and change it. Many people, unless they are in pain because of something they care about that is not being fulfilled, will not go into their deep inner life at all. In a sense, they’re not living. They’re just being lived, publicly and privately.

Rather than boasting a doctrinal statement, the Refuge extends an invitation: The Refuge is a mission center and Christian community dedicated to helping hurting and hungry people find faith, hope, and dignity alongside each other. We love to throw parties, tell stories, find hope, and practice the ways of Jesus as best we can. We’re all hurt or hungry in our own ways. We’re at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the Bible. We find faith as we follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and our questions and doubts. We find dignity as God’s image-bearers and strive to call out that dignity in one another. We all receive, we all give. We are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals, progressives, overeducated, undereducated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving. Yet Christ’s love binds our differences together in unity. At The Refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.24 Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.

The Sherwood Forest Chronicles . 1. If Robin Hood steals from the rich, doesn't that make them poor? Does he give them their money back? I mean, what the point of robbing to begin with if your mission statement is logically flawed? 2. If the Sheriff of Nottingham is such an asshole, why isn’t he the Prime Minister of Nottingham? 3. Why don’t I see elves here? Did all the elves of Sherwood Forest migrate to New Zealand to become extras on the Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films? 4. Does Little John even know what an oxymoron is? 5. If Smokey the Bear came to Sherwood Forest to make a public service announcement about preventing forest fires, would he leave with arrows in his ass or would the Merry Men feast on bear meat for several days? And what makes the Merry Men merry in the first place? 6. What do you think? Does Robin Hood shop at Walmart or Target?

PRIVATE VICTORY Habit 1 1. Pause and respond based on principles and desired results. 2. Use proactive language. 3. Focus on your Circle of Influence. 4. Become a Transition Person. Habit 2 5. Define outcomes before you act. 6. Create and live by a personal mission statement. Habit 3 7. Focus on your highest priorities. 8. Eliminate the unimportant. 9. Plan every week. 10. Stay true in the moment of choice. PUBLIC VICTORY 11. Build your Emotional Bank Account with others. Habit 4 12. Have an Abundance Mentality. 13. Balance courage and consideration. 14. Consider other people’s wins as well as your own. 15. Create Win-Win Agreements. Habit 5 16. Practice Empathic Listening. 17. Respectfully seek to be understood. Habit 6 18. Value differences. 19. Seek 3rd Alternatives. Habit 7 20. Achieve the Daily Private Victory. 21. Balance production and production capability.

A Simple Way to Summarize Everything We’ve Talked About What sort of boss do you want to be? What is your mission statement? How can you formulate your own aims? Remember that in order to know how to use your time, you need to know what your aims are. How much of your day should be focused on leadership? Start there. With the rest of your time, you can be as much of a specialist as you want. Study staff member X for a while. Note how he or she acts. Have your antennae active. Try to ascertain what colors you see. Think about what attracted the employee here. Why was this particular job important? Which driving forces could be showing up here? Why does the person stay on at this job? Look at a concrete work task and try to ascertain the necessary development level. There could be several analyses, depending on how many different actions the person has to carry out in a given day. The more you break it down, the more exactly you can guide the person.

I was impressed by the scene in Apollo 13 where the astronauts request confirmation of their calculations and several people at Mission Control dive for their slide rules. For several months after that, my standard response to statements like "We must implement multi-processor object-oriented Java-based client-server technologies immediately!" was "You know, FORTRAN and slide rules put men on the moon and got them back safely multiple times." Tended to shut them up, at least for a moment.

If you are new to a church staff or to an organization, here are five ways you can start well. 1. Take time to memorize the mission statement, vision, values, and creeds. Know the history of the church. Learn it by taking a pastor or leader to coffee, asking questions, and understanding key events that may have impacted the congregation and surrounding community. 2. Familiarize yourself with all the ministries in the church and those who lead them. Know their function, who they serve, what they offer, and how you might partner with them in the future. 3. In meetings, be a student. Learn the culture, observe team personalities, seek to understand, and speak to confirm and contribute. Be careful with criticism early on. It’s hard to critique a house you haven’t lived in. 4. Seek out a pastor of the same sex who has longevity with Jesus and ministry. Ask for mentorship, accountability, and community. Look for wisdom over popularity. 5. Get to know the congregation. When we love the people as we learn our position, we establish roots that won’t easily be pulled up when ministry gets hard.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS What is truly important in my life? What would I really like to be and do in my life? What are my greatest strengths? What are my talents, possibilities, and true potential? If I had unlimited time and resources, what would I do? What are my deepest priorities? Which relationships do I wish to be lasting? Who is the one person who has made the greatest positive impact in my life? What must I do, and how must I manage my life, to constantly nurture these vital relationships? What kind of person do I wish to become? What are the principles I would like to live by?

Ron Sider rocked the Christian world over thirty years ago with his book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. He now challenges Christians to pragmatic ministry to the poor by joining in a covenant he calls the Generous Christian Pledge.' He encourages every Christian to undertake a lifestyle mission for the poor. The pledge reads: "I pledge to open my heart to God's call to care as much about the poor as the Bible does. Daily, to pray for the poor, beginning with the Generous Christians Prayer: "Lord Jesus, teach my heart to share your love with the poor." Weekly, to minister, at least one hour, to a poor person: helping, serving, sharing with and mostly, getting to know someone in need. Monthly, to study, at least one book, article, or film about the plight of the poor and hungry and discuss it with others. Yearly, to retreat, for a few hours before the Scriptures, to meditate on this one question: Is caring for the poor as important in my life as it is in the Bible? and to examine my budget and priorities in light of it, asking God what changes He would like me to make in the use of my time, money, and influence." The cage-rattling statements of Jesus and James demand a response. The Generous Christian Pledge is a great place to start.

After all, the programmatic statement of God’s kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7) isn’t simply about ‘ethics’, as people often imagine in our shrunken Western world. It’s about mission. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . the meek . . . the mourners . . . the peacemakers . . . the hungry-for-justice people’ and so on. We all too easily assume that Jesus is saying ‘try hard to be like this, and if you can manage it you’ll be the sort of people I want in my kingdom’. But that’s not the point! The point is that God’s kingdom is being launched on earth as in heaven, and the way it will happen is by God working through people of this sort.

The Blue Mind Rx Statement Our wild waters provide vast cognitive, emotional, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual values for people from birth, through adolescence, adulthood, older age, and in death; wild waters provide a useful, widely available, and affordable range of treatments healthcare practitioners can incorporate into treatment plans. The world ocean and all waterways, including lakes, rivers, and wetlands (collectively, blue space), cover over 71% of our planet. Keeping them healthy, clean, accessible, and biodiverse is critical to human health and well-being. In addition to fostering more widely documented ecological, economic, and cultural diversities, our mental well-being, emotional diversity, and resiliency also rely on the global ecological integrity of our waters. Blue space gives us half of our oxygen, provides billions of people with jobs and food, holds the majority of Earth's biodiversity including species and ecosystems, drives climate and weather, regulates temperature, and is the sole source of hydration and hygiene for humanity throughout history. Neuroscientists and psychologists add that the ocean and wild waterways are a wellspring of happiness and relaxation, sociality and romance, peace and freedom, play and creativity, learning and memory, innovation and insight, elation and nostalgia, confidence and solitude, wonder and awe, empathy and compassion, reverence and beauty — and help manage trauma, anxiety, sleep, autism, addiction, fitness, attention/focus, stress, grief, PTSD, build personal resilience, and much more. Chronic stress and anxiety cause or intensify a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more. Being on, in, and near water can be among the most cost-effective ways of reducing stress and anxiety. We encourage healthcare professionals and advocates for the ocean, seas, lakes, and rivers to go deeper and incorporate the latest findings, research, and insights into their treatment plans, communications, reports, mission statements, strategies, grant proposals, media, exhibits, keynotes, and educational programs and to consider the following simple talking points: •Water is the essence of life: The ocean, healthy rivers, lakes, and wetlands are good for our minds and bodies. •Research shows that nature is therapeutic, promotes general health and well-being, and blue space in both urban and rural settings further enhances and broadens cognitive, emotional, psychological, social, physical, and spiritual benefits. •All people should have safe access to salubrious, wild, biodiverse waters for well-being, healing, and therapy. •Aquatic biodiversity has been directly correlated with the therapeutic potency of blue space. Immersive human interactions with healthy aquatic ecosystems can benefit both. •Wild waters can serve as medicine for caregivers, patient families, and all who are part of patients’ circles of support. •Realization of the full range and potential magnitude of ecological, economic, physical, intrinsic, and emotional values of wild places requires us to understand, appreciate, maintain, and improve the integrity and purity of one of our most vital of medicines — water.

A FEW DAYS earlier in Princeton, Abraham Pais had learned that the New York Times was about to break the story. Knowing that reporters would pester Einstein for a comment, he drove over to the physicist’s house on Mercer Street. When Pais explained his mission, Einstein chuckled loudly, and then said, “The trouble with Oppenheimer is that he loves a woman who doesn’t love him—the United States government. . . . [T]he problem was simple: All Oppenheimer needed to do was go to Washington, tell the officials that they were fools, and then go home.” Privately, Pais may have agreed, but he felt this would not serve as a statement to the press. So he persuaded Einstein to draft a simple statement in support of Oppenheimer—“I admire him not only as a scientist but also as a great human being”—and got him to read it to a United Press reporter over the phone.

It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.

Watch out for these two kind of fears: the fear of God that gives courage and wisdom to overcome the fears in the world and to accomplish your God given mission distinctively, and the fear of the world that gives you excuses and hinders you from fulfilling your God given vision. No matter what, you shall give an account of your stewardship to God Almighty. There is no day like a day to do something in the day, for each day, you get closer to the journey’s end! Feel the urgency to do something as long as you meet a new day! Have a true passion for living to accomplish your true mission! Step out each day like a wounded lion; noble, but not timid; meek, but not weak; courageous, but not proud; wise, but with understanding, and be determined to overcome all obstacles with an unstoppable mindset and wisdom, knowing that God is waiting for you at your journey’s end to print the statement of how you took the journey to you.

It was around this time that a routine medical screening warned that Chris might have tuberculosis. We talked about it on the phone. I remember the discussion vividly, not because of the disease--I thought further testing would say he was fine, which it did--but because of his attitude. Namely, that he was replaceable. “If I die, you could just get a new husband and Bubba can get a new dad,” he told me. It made me furious. Heartbroken. It was as if he didn’t understand how irreplaceable he was to me, to our son, and to the rest of the family. It was as if he didn’t know how much I loved him. I realized later that, in his mind, he was only being realistic. He wanted what was best for me. He had seen death up close and watched the mission go on, lives go on, whether people wanted it to or not. If he couldn’t be there, he still wanted me to be happy. Even so, it was a devastating statement at the time. In some ways, I never got over it.

Keeping a new church outwardly focused from the beginning is much easier than trying to refocus an inwardly concerned church. In order to plant a successful church, you have to know that you know that you are undeniably called by God. The call to start a new church plant is not the same as the call to serve in an existing church or work in a ministry-related organization. You may be the greatest preacher this side of Billy Graham but still not be called to start a church. If you think you may have allowed an improper reason, voice or emotion to lead you to the idea of starting a new church, back away now. Spend some more time with God. You don’t want to move forward on a hunch or because you feel “pretty sure” that you should be planting a church. You have to be completely certain. “You’re afraid? So what. Everybody’s afraid. Fear is the common ground of humanity. The question you must wrestle to the ground is, ‘Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity?’” When you think of a people group that you might be called to reach, does your heart break for them? If so, you may want to consider whether God is specifically calling you to reach that group for His kingdom. Is your calling clear? Has your calling been confirmed by others? Are you humbled by the call? Have you acted on your call? Do you know for certain that God has called you to start a new church? Nail it down. When exactly were you called? What were the circumstances surrounding your call? How did it match up with the sources of proper calling? Do you recognize the four specific calls in your calling? How? How does your call measure up to biblical characteristics? What is the emerging vision that God is giving you with this call? As your dependence on God grows, so will your church. One of the most common mistakes that enthusiastic and well-meaning church starters make is to move to a new location and start trying to reach people without thinking through even a short-term strategy. Don’t begin until you count the cost. why would you even consider starting a church (the only institution Jesus left behind and the only one that will last forever) without first developing a God-infused, specific, winning strategy? There are two types of pain: the pain of front-end discipline and the pain of back-end regret. With the question of strategy development, you get to choose which pain you’d rather live with. Basically, a purpose, mission and vision statement provides guiding principles that describe what God has called you to do (mission), how you will do it (purpose) and what it will look like when you get it done (vision). Keep your statement simple. Be as precise as possible. Core values are the filter through which you fulfill your strategy. These are important, because your entire strategy will be created and implemented in such a way as to bring your core values to life. Your strategic aim will serve as the beacon that guides the rest of your strategy. It is the initial purpose for which you are writing your strategy. He will not send more people to you than you are ready to receive. So what can you do? The same thing Dr. Graham does. Prepare in a way that enables God to open the floodgates into your church. If you are truly ready, He will send people your way. If you do the work we’ve described in this chapter, you’ll be able to build your new church on a strong base of God-breathed preparation. You’ll know where you are, where you’re going and how you are going to get there. You’ll be standing in the rain with a huge bucket, ready to take in the deluge. However, if you don’t think through your strategy, write it down and then implement it, you’ll be like the man who stands in the rainstorm with a Dixie cup. You’ll be completely unprepared to capture what God is pouring out. The choice is yours!

What do you typically like to do on a first date with a woman?" "That answer depends on the woman, since you're not all the same. Some women actually would enjoy beer and pool on a Friday night"---he stopped to give her a raised brow to emphasize his statement---"while others would want to have dinner at a nice restaurant. Some might want to hang out at home, order pizza and watch a movie just so we could talk and get to know each other. Another woman might be more interested in going to see a basketball game. Or maybe go to a museum." "And you'd be interested in doing any of those things." He shrugged. "I'm interested in doing a lot of different things. I'm not just a rancher. I like to get out of my element and learn something new." She stared at him. Dammit. She loved that answer. He really thought about what a woman might want to do. And he was open to new experiences. A lot of guys just did their own thing, expecting the woman to fall in line. "That's...very nice.

I need a drink. Now.” After tossing—fine, throwing—my purse and keys on the couch, I march straight into the kitchen. No more delays; it's time to forget tonight. It’s been yet another night like all the other first dates that never meet a second one. When you begin to lose count, that's when it's really time for a drink. Adrian stands there, leaning against the counter in an unbuttoned dress shirt and dark wash jeans. He glances at me as I walk in. “How was your date?” he asks, taking a swig of his scotch. I brush past him on my mission, opening the cupboard and moving a couple bottles around. I reiterate, “I need alcohol.” Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him hiding a smile before he says, “That bad?” My face twitches as I ignore his line of questioning. It is more like a statement he wants me to clarify, even though he already knows the answer. Instead, I ask, “I have vodka left, don't I?” I stand on my tiptoes in hopes of spotting something in the very back. Nothing. He waltzes over and looks with me, his chin almost touching my shoulder. “I think you polished that one off after last week's date.” His voice is low right next to my ear, very nearly causing a shiver.

Some years ago I saw a documentary on dying whose main theme was that people die as they lived. That was Jimmy. For five years, since he began undergoing operations for bladder cancer and even after his lung cancer was diagnosed, he continued the activities that he considered important, marching against crackhouses, campaigning against the demolition of the Ford Auditorium, organizing Detroit Summer, making speeches, and writing letters to the editor and articles for the SOSAD newsletter and Northwest Detroiter. In 1992 while he was undergoing the chemotherapy that cleared up his bladder cancer, he helped form the Coalition against Privatization and to Save Our City. The coalition was initiated by activist members of a few AFSCME locals who contacted Carl Edwards and Alice Jennings who in turn contacted us. Jimmy helped write the mission statement that gave the union activists a sense of themselves as not only city workers but citizens of the city and its communities. The coalition’s town meetings and demonstrations were instrumental in persuading the new mayor, Dennis Archer, to come out against privatization, using language from the coalition newsletter to explain his position. At the same time Jimmy was putting out the garbage, keeping our corner at Field and Goethe free of litter and rubbish, mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, picking cranberries, and keeping up “his” path on Sutton. After he entered the hospice program, which usually means death within six months, and up to a few weeks before his death, Jimmy slowed down a bit, but he was still writing and speaking and organizing. He used to say that he wasn’t going to die until he got ready, and because he was so cheerful and so engaged it was easy to believe him. A few weeks after he went on oxygen we did three movement-building workshops at the SOSAD office for a group of Roger Barfield’s friends who were trying to form a community-action group following a protest demonstration at a neighborhood sandwich shop over the murder of one of their friends. With oxygen tubes in his nostrils and a portable oxygen tank by his side, Jimmy spoke for almost an hour on one of his favorite subjects, the need to “think dialectically, rather than biologically.” Recognizing that this was probably one of Jimmy’s last extended speeches, I had the session videotaped by Ron Scott. At the end of this workshop we asked participants to come to the next session prepared to grapple with three questions: What can we do to make our neighborhoods safe? How can we motivate people to transform? How can we create jobs?

Instructions: Use the scale below to indicate how each statement applies to your actions on the team. Respond as honestly as possible, as this will allow you to most accurately identify any areas of development that you may have. Scale: 3 = Usually 2 = Sometimes 1 = Rarely Humble My teammates would say: ______ 1. I compliment or praise them without hesitation. ______ 2. I easily admit to my mistakes. ______ 3. I am willing to take on lower-level work for the good of the team. ______ 4. I gladly share credit for team accomplishments. ______ 5. I readily acknowledge my weaknesses. ______ 6. I offer and accept apologies graciously. ______ Total Humility Score Hungry My teammates would say: ______ 7. I do more than what is required in my own job. ______ 8. I have passion for the “mission” of the team. ______ 9. I feel a sense of personal responsibility for the overall success of the team. ______ 10. I am willing to contribute to and think about work outside of office hours. ______ 11. I am willing to take on tedious or challenging tasks whenever necessary. ______ 12. I look for opportunities to contribute outside of my area of responsibility. ______ Total Hunger Score Smart My teammates would say: ______ 13. I generally understand what others are feeling during meetings and conversations. ______ 14. I show empathy to others on the team. ______ 15. I demonstrate an interest in the lives of my teammates. ______ 16. I am an attentive listener. ______ 17. I am aware of how my words and actions impact others on the team. ______ 18. I adjust my behavior and style to fit the nature of a conversation or relationship. ______ Total Smart Score Scoring: Remember, the purpose of this tool is to help you explore and assess how you embody the three virtues of an ideal team player. The standards for “ideal” are high. An ideal team player will have few of these statements answered with anything lower than a ‘3’ (usually) response. A score of 18 or 17 is an indication that the virtue is a potential strength. A score range of 16 to 14 is an indication that you most likely have some work to do around that virtue to become an ideal team player. A score of 13 or lower is an indication that you need improvement around that virtue to become an ideal team player. Finally, keep in mind that while this tool is quantitative, the real value will be found in the qualitative, developmental conversations among team-members and their managers. Don't focus on the numbers, but rather the concepts and the individual statements where you scored low.

Adventists urged to study women’s ordination for themselves Adventist Church President Ted N. C. Wilson appealed to members to study the Bible regarding the theology of ordination as the Church continues to examine the matter at Annual Council next month and at General Conference Session next year. Above, Wilson delivers the Sabbath sermon at Annual Council last year. [ANN file photo] President Wilson and TOSC chair Stele also ask for prayers for Holy Spirit to guide proceedings September 24, 2014 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review Ted N. C. Wilson, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, appealed to church members worldwide to earnestly read what the Bible says about women’s ordination and to pray that he and other church leaders humbly follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance on the matter. Church members wishing to understand what the Bible teaches on women’s ordination have no reason to worry about where to start, said Artur A. Stele, who oversaw an unprecedented, two-year study on women’s ordination as chair of the church-commissioned Theology of Ordination Study Committee. Stele, who echoed Wilson’s call for church members to read the Bible and pray on the issue, recommended reading the study’s three brief “Way Forward Statements,” which cite Bible texts and Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White to support each of the three positions on women’s ordination that emerged during the committee’s research. The results of the study will be discussed in October at the Annual Council, a major business meeting of church leaders. The Annual Council will then decide whether to ask the nearly 2,600 delegates of the world church to make a final call on women’s ordination in a vote at the General Conference Session next July. Wilson, speaking in an interview, urged each of the church’s 18 million members to prayerfully read the study materials, available on the website of the church’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research. "Look to see how the papers and presentations were based on an understanding of a clear reading of Scripture,” Wilson said in his office at General Conference headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. “The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that we are to take the Bible just as it reads,” he said. “And I would encourage each church member, and certainly each representative at the Annual Council and those who will be delegates to the General Conference Session, to prayerfully review those presentations and then ask the Holy Spirit to help them know God’s will.” The Spirit of Prophecy refers to the writings of White, who among her statements on how to read the Bible wrote in The Great Controversy (p. 598), “The language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning, unless a symbol or figure is employed.” “We don’t have the luxury of having the Urim and the Thummim,” Wilson said, in a nod to the stones that the Israelite high priest used in Old Testament times to learn God’s will. “Nor do we have a living prophet with us. So we must rely upon the Holy Spirit’s leading in our own Bible study as we review the plain teachings of Scripture.” He said world church leadership was committed to “a very open, fair, and careful process” on the issue of women’s ordination. Wilson added that the crucial question facing the church wasn’t whether women should be ordained but whether church members who disagreed with the final decision on ordination, whatever it might be, would be willing to set aside their differences to focus on the church’s 151-year mission: proclaiming Revelation 14 and the three angels’ messages that Jesus is coming soon. 3 Views on Women’s Ordination In an effort to better understand the Bible’s teaching on ordination, the church established the Theology of Ordination Study Committee, a group of 106 members commonly referred to by church leaders as TOSC. It was not organized

A man can survive ten years--but twenty-five, who can get through alive? Shukhov rather enjoyed having everybody poke a finger at him as if to say: Look at him, his term's nearly up. But he had his doubts about it. Those zeks who finished their time during the war had all been "retained pending special instructions" and had been released only in '46. Even those serving three-year sentences were kept for another five. The law can be stood on its head. When your ten years are up they can say, "Here's another ten for you." Or exile you. Yet there were times when you thought about it and you almost choked with excitement. Yes, your term really _is_ coming to an end; the spool is unwinding. . . . Good God! To step out to freedom, just walk out on your own two feet. But it wasn't right for an old-timer to talk about it aloud, and Shukhov said to Kilgas: "Don't you worry about those twenty-five years of yours. It's not a fact you'll be in all that time. But that I've been in eight full years--now that is a fact." Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out. According to his dossier, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov had been sentenced for high treason. He had testified to it himself. Yes, he'd surrendered to the Germans with the intention of betraying his country and he'd returned from captivity to carry out a mission for German intelligence. What sort of mission neither Shukhov nor the interrogator could say. So it had been left at that- -a mission. Shukhov had figured it all out. If he didn't sign he'd be shot If he signed he'd still get a chance to live. So he signed. But what really happened was this. In February 1942 their whole army was surrounded on the northwest front No food was parachuted to them. There were no planes. Things got so bad that they were scraping the hooves of dead horses--the horn could be soaked In water and eaten. Their ammunition was gone. So the Germans rounded them up in the forest, a few at a time. Shukhov was In one of these groups, and remained in German captivity for a day or two. Then five of them managed to escape. They stole through the forest and marshes again, and, by a miracle, reached their own lines. A machine gunner shot two of them on the spot, a third died of his wounds, but two got through. Had they been wiser they'd have said they'd been wandering in the forest, and then nothing would have happened. But they told the truth: they said they were escaped POW's. POW's, you fuckers! If all five of them had got through, their statements could have been found to tally and they might have been believed. But with two it was hopeless. You've put your damned heads together and cooked up that escape story, they were told. Deaf though he was, Senka caught on that they were talking about escaping from the Germans, and said in a loud voice: "Three times I escaped, and three times they caught me." Senka, who had suffered so much, was usually silent: he didn't hear what people said and didn't mix in their conversation. Little was known about him--only that he'd been in Buchenwald, where he'd worked with the underground and smuggled in arms for the mutiny; and how the Germans had punished him by tying his wrists behind his back, hanging him up by them, and whipping him. "You've been In for eight years, Vanya," Kilgas argued. "But what camps? Not 'specials.' You bad breads to sleep with. You didn't wear numbers. But try and spend eight years in a 'special'--doing hard labor. No one's come out of a 'special' alive." "Broads! Boards you mean, not broads." Shukhov stared at the coals in the stove and remeinbered his seven years in the North. And how he worked for three years hauling logs--for packing cases and railroad ties. The flames in the campfires had danced up there, too--at timber-felling during the night. Their chief made it a rule that any squad that had failed to meet its quota had to stay In the forest after dark.

These animals are not disputed but “hidden.” It is an optimistic mission statement. It would be quixotic to seek gremlins that exist no further than storybooks. Bigfoot exists, along with Nessie and the Jersey Devil. Their formal discovery will happen tomorrow, or next week at the latest, and won’t you feel silly when they are?

Logical enlightenment will always defeat emotional ignorance, although the battle is not necessarily pretty. —mission statement, Denali Research Facility

In January, Hole sent a message, detailing recent attempts in Berlin to separate uranium isotopes with centrifuges. He also reported an outright statement by a German physicist involved in the program that his countrymen “intended to make uranium bombs.” Tronstad shared none of these conflicting reports with Rønneberg and his team. Vemork was the single identifiable target open to them in their effort to stop the Germans from obtaining a bomb that could annihilate a city in a single strike.

Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs. As you do, other people begin to sense that you’re not being driven by everything that happens to you. You have a sense of mission about what you’re trying to do and you are excited about it.3

Bleace Mission Statement To create a more emotionally intelligent world by helping every single person to artistically release their frustration by expressing their imagination.

least some of these goals should reflect Quadrant II activities. Ideally, these weekly goals would be tied to the longer-term goals you have identified in conjunction with your personal mission statement. But even if you haven’t written your mission

The hierarchical pyramid feels outdated, but what other structure could replace it? How about decision-making? Everybody should make meaningful decisions, not just a few higher-ups, but isn’t that just a recipe for chaos? How about promotions and salary increases? Can we find ways to handle such matters without bringing politics to the table? How can we have meetings that are productive and uplifting, where we speak from our hearts and not from our egos? How can we make purpose central to everything we do, and avoid the cynicism that lofty-sounding mission statements often inspire? What we need is not merely some grand vision of a new type of organization. We need concrete answers to dozens of practical questions like these.

The history of the world teaches that the power of joy in people doesn’t come in getting, it always comes in giving, contributing, adding more. The more you give, the more you live. If you’re about something better, live for something higher than self.

Mission statements are also vital to successful organizations.

Review your organization’s mission statement, vision, and values. Ask your manager to explain how you can contribute to strategic objectives. Pay attention to formal communications from executives and upper management. Stay on top of changes to your firm’s strategy.

It does something to you when you are running close to what you perceive as our limit (back then, I still topped at 40 percent) and there is someone else out there who makes the difficult look effortless. It was obvious that his preparedness was several levels above our own. Captain Connolly did not show up to simply get through the program and graduate so he could collect some wings for his uniform and belong to the unspoken fraternity of supposed badasses at Fort Campbell. He came to explore what he was made of and grow. That required a willingness to set a new standard wherever possible and make a statement, not necessarily to our dumb asses, but to himself. He was respectful to all the instructors and the school, but he was not there to be led... Most people love standards. It gives the brain something to focus on, which helps us reach a place of achievement. Organizational structure and atta' boys from our instructors or bosses keep us motivated to perform and to move up on that bell curve. Captain Connolly did not require external motivation. He trained to his own standard and used the existing structure for his own purposes. Air Assault School became his own personal octagon, where he could test himself on a level even the instructors hadn't imagined. For the next nine days, he put his head down and quietly went about the business of smashing every single standard at Air Assault School. He saw the bar that the instructors pointed to and the rest of us were trying to tap as a hurdle to leap over, and he did it time and again. He understood that his rank only meant something if he sought out a different certification: an invisible badge that says, "I am the example. Follow me, motherfuckers, and I will show you that there is more to this life than so-called authority and stripes or candy on a uniform. I'll show you what true ambition looks like beyond all the external structure in a place of limitless mental growth." He didn't say any of that. He didn't run his mouth at all. I can't recall him uttering word one in ten fucking days, but through his performance and extreme dedication, he dropped breadcrumbs for anybody who was awake and aware enough to follow him. He flashed his tool kit. He showed us what potent, silent, exemplary leadership looked like. He checked into every Gold Group run, which was led by the fastest instructor in that school, and volunteered to be the first to carry the flag... His conditioning was clearly off the charts, and I'm not talking about the physical aspect alone. Being a physical specimen is one thing, but it takes so much more energy to stay mentally prepared enough to arrive every day at a place like Air Assault School on a mission to dominate. The fact that he was able to do that told me it couldn't possibly have been a one-time thing. It had to be the result of countless lonely hours in the gym, on the trails, and in the books. Most of his work was hidden, but it is within that unseen work that self-leaders are made. I suspect the reason he was capable of exceeding any and all standards consistently was because he was dedicated at a level most people cannot fathom in order to stay ready for any and all opportunities. p237

One of the best things we ever did, and I wish we did it earlier in our marriage, was to have a weekly team meeting. We started these meetings when the kids were probably 11 and 13 and they usually took place on a Sunday. I can still hear the groans when we would say, “Family meeting.” Everyone had to put down their phone or stop what they were doing. Yes, sometimes that groan was from me. It was usually a rough start but always ended up being productive. We would sit around the table and talk about our family mission statement and our weekly accomplishments and failures. We would discuss our challenges and offer solutions. We found out so many things our kids were going through and things that were on their minds that we would never have discovered without these meetings. They offered an opportunity for us to connect with one another amidst all the busyness in our lives.

What is truly important in my life? What would I really like to be and do in my life? What are my greatest strengths? What are my talents, possibilities, and true potential? If I had unlimited time and resources, what would I do? What are my deepest priorities?

Which relationships do I wish to be lasting? Who is the one person who has made the greatest positive impact in my life? What must I do, and how must I manage my life, to constantly nurture these vital relationships? What kind of person do I wish to become? What are the principles I would like to live by? What have been my happiest moments? How do I want to be remembered? And, finally, how can I serve others in a meaningful way throughout my life?

VCs and entrepreneurs are considered by many to be thinkers these days, their commercial utterances treated like ideas, and these ideas are often in the future tense: claims about the next world, forged by adding up the theses of their portfolio companies or extrapolating from their own start-up’s mission statement. That people listened to their ideas gave them a chance to launder their self-interested hopes into more selfless-sounding predictions about the world. For example, a baron wishing to withhold benefits from workers might reframe that desire as a prediction about a future in which every human being is a solo entrepreneur. A

Vision mission: What was the original market or technology insight that led you to create this company? Customers: Who do you envision buying this product or service? Who will use it? Problem statement: What’s the problem you think you can solve for your potential customers? Use cases: What are the specific ways people will use this product or service to solve their problem? Product/solution: Give a detailed explanation of the technology behind the solution—what does it do now, and what else is it capable of doing? Ecosystem: In many cases there are other companies involved in solving the problem or adding additional value. These companies form an ecosystem around the problem and solution. What are all the companies and where in the ecosystem are the control points where one company has leverage? Competition: Who else is trying to solve this problem—or, if no one else sees the problem yet, who might jump in to compete with you to solve the problem once you identify it? Business model: How will your product or service change business for your customers? Will it increase their return on investment or reduce costs in a significant way? Or does it allow them to do something that couldn’t have been done with prior technology, creating huge value? Sales and go-to-market: Enterprise companies should articulate how the product or solution will make its way to the market. Through a sales force? Through distribution partners? Both? For a consumer company, how will users find out about your solution? From app stores? Search? Viral adoption? Growth hacking techniques? Advertising? PR? Organization: How is the company organized? Who are the major influencers on the company? How are decisions made? What kind of culture will work? Funding strategy: What’s the next funding event? A private financing? An IPO? How much runway does the company have before it needs more money and what kind of funding is in place to execute against the category strategy?

The vision is the public statement of the founder’s intent, WHY the company exists. It is literally the vision of a future that does not yet exist. The mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principles

Does your school mission focus on learning? Is the word “learning” in your mission statement? If so, it makes it easier to focus on the instructional program and creating a positive school climate. Rigby’s Three Forms of Logic Behind Instructional Leadership Prevailing logic: The role of the principal is to be both

In my work I’ve noticed that senior executives of companies are among the worst at accepting the reality of trade-offs. I recently spent some time with the CEO of a company in Silicon Valley valued at $40 billion. He shared with me the value statement of his organization, which he had just crafted, and which he planned to announce to the whole company. But when he shared it I cringed: “We value passion, innovation, execution, and leadership.” One of several problems with the list is, Who doesn’t value these things? Another problem is that this tells employees nothing about what the company values most. It says nothing about what choices employees should be making when these values are at odds. This is similarly true when companies claim that their mission is to serve all stakeholders—clients, employees, shareholders—equally. To say they value equally everyone they interact with leaves management with no clear guidance on what to do when faced with trade-offs between the people they serve.

Literally, then, is easy. It was originally one more variation on indicating truth—specifically exactness, as in “by the letter”: He took the advice literally; He meant it literally. But that can have been only a snapshot along a time line; there was never any question that literally was going to morph into other meanings. The only question was what kind. For one, literally quite predictably went beyond its original meaning into one where “by the letter” no longer makes sense except as a metaphor: We were literally the only ones there; We were literally on the brink of a depression. There are no letters involved in these statements, but literally means that the statement is true in a specific way—as in what we sometimes even refer to as “by the letter.” A next step was for literally to go personal, on a mission less to specify than to vent.

You’ll know that your company’s mission, vision, and values are being communicated effectively when you observe that your employees’ job satisfaction is high, that they have a customer service focus, and that they feel committed, loyal, and empowered. What that really means is that you need to think of everything in your business as marketing—from your business model to how you treat your employees to how you engage your investors.

In her groundbreaking 1980 book The Death of Nature, the environmental historian Carolyn Merchant reminded readers that up until the 1600s, the earth was seen as alive, usually taking the form of a mother [...] The metaphor changed with the unlocking of some (but by no means all) of nature's mysteries during the scientific revolution of the 1600s. With nature now cast as a machine, devoid of mystery or divinity, its component parts could be dammed, extracted, and remade with impunity. Nature still sometimes appeared as a woman, but one easily dominated and subdued. Sir Francis Bacon best encapsulated the new ethos when he wrote in the 1623 De dignitate et augmentis scientiarium that nature is to be "put in contraint, moulded, and made as it were new by art and the hand of man." Those words may as well have been BP's corporate mission statement.

Following is a sample list of some points you will want to include in your business plan. These can all be organized in a very professional manner in a notebook that includes tabs. • Executive summary. Include a one- or two-page summary of your plan. • Mission statement. Include one or two paragraphs that succinctly state your purpose. • Background. Present information about yourself and your experience. • Financial statement. List your assets, liabilities, and net worth. • Site location. Include a list of benefits, maps, and proximity to shopping and schools. • Demographics. Present information about the people living in the area (income, education, etc.). • Competitor analysis. Determine who your competitors are and present average rents and sales comparisons. • Marketing strategy. Define your target market (tenants, buyers, etc.). • Financial analysis. Include historical and pro forma operating statements. • Improvements. Define capital improvements to be made to the property. • Purchase agreement. Include your sales contract with the seller. • Exhibits. Include photographs of the property, tax returns, sample floor plans, and the like.

Pastor Training School Consider this mission statement of a well-known university: “To be plainly instructed and consider well that the main end of your life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ.” Founded in 1636, this university employed exclusively Christian professors, emphasized character formation in its students above all else, and rooted all its policies and practices in a Christian worldview. This school served as a bastion of academic excellence and Christian distinction.1 This mission statement, however, is not from Dallas Theological Seminary. Neither is it from Wheaton College. It’s from Harvard University—this statement described their founding mission. Harvard began as a school to equip ministers to share the Good News.

I believe there is a genuine need for people to feel part of an ennobling mission, but stating a mission or purpose in words is not enough. Many mission statements end up sounding like ‘apple pie and motherhood.’ People need visions to make the purpose more concrete and tangible. We have to learn to ‘paint pictures’ of the type of organization we want to have. Core values are necessary to help people with day-to-day decision making. Purpose is abstract. Visions may be long term. People need ‘guiding stars’ to navigate and make decisions day to day. But core values are only helpful if they can be translated into concrete behaviors. For example, a core value like openness’ requires the skills of reflection and inquiry within an overall context of trusting and supporting one another.

The mission statement should be accessible, easy to remember and articulate, and devoid of jargon so the team members actually believe it.

mission statement is not something you write overnight. It takes deep introspection, careful analysis, thoughtful expression, and often many rewrites to produce it in final form.

But they do highlight the need to resurrect ambition and vision in our everyday policymaking. This cannot just be about bold statements. We have to believe in the public sector and invest in its core capabilities, including the ability to interact with other value creators in society, and design contracts that work in the public interest. We must create more effective interfaces with innovations across the whole of society; rethink how policies are designed; change how intellectual property regimes are governed; and use R&D to distribute intelligence across academia, government, business and civil society. This means restoring public purpose in policies so that they are aimed at creating tangible benefits for citizens and setting goals that matter to people – driven by public-interest considerations rather than profit.5

Has a vague, general vision or mission statement Has concrete quarterly objectives but ones that fail to energize or inspire people to take their efforts to the next level Has a value set but no guiding principles for implementing them Has a strategy that is concrete and inspirational Has an intent that is both meaningful and memorable Makes one decision that eliminates one thousand later decisions

There’s an inverse correlation between the level of bullshit in a company’s mission statement and its actual performance.

An Objective is like a mission statement, only for a shorter period of time. I think of it like this: A mission is an Objective for five years, and an Objective is a mission for three months.

Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, suggests that in developing a personal mission statement, you should focus on what you wish to be and do, based on the values and principles that undergird all your beliefs and actions. “Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power,” writes Covey.

NLP

Writing a family mission statement can give your family purpose and is a great reminder of what you need to focus on daily. It is easy in this busy life to just go about what we need to do and not keep in mind the bigger picture. Getting started is easy! Just write down a few things that your family values. For instance, you can write following Jesus Christ, having fun, or reaching out to others. Your family mission statement can go from there!” For more information check out drsusanharrison.com.

The first step is asking what kind of church are we? VALUE DISCOVERY AND DEVELOPMENT It asks why we do what we do? The answer will reveal the church's core values. They are what drive the church, MISSIONS DEVELOPMENT The church's mission statement answers the functional question what are we supposed to be doing? This will enable each church to personalize the great commission and implement it in their unique ministry context. ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN This answers the question what is going on out there? This helps churches anticipate trends and coming changes in the general environment, that affect society, technology, economy, politics. This positions the church to be creative and proactive in thinking, so that we are not over whelmed or left behind in our ministry. VISION DEVELOPMENT While the Mission provides a statement of where the church is going, while the vision paints a picture of what that will look like. Vision development is seeing the church's future for it to happen. STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT The strategy answers the question: How will we get to where we want to be? Once we know (Missions) and see (Vision) where we are going, we must decide how we will get there. A well thought through strategy consists of a target group we want to reach.

The contradictions (antilogia) found in Scripture are apparent, not real; they are to be understood only with respect to us who cannot comprehend and perceive the agreement everywhere, but not in the thing itself. And if the laws of legitimate contradiction are attended to (that opposites should agree with the same thing [tō autō], in the same respect [kata to auto], with reference to the same thing [pros to auto] and in the same time [tō autō chronō]), these various apparent contradictions (enantiophanē) in Scripture might be easily reconciled. For the discourse does not concern the same thing, as when James ascribes justification to works, which Paul denies to them. For the former speaks of declarative justification of the effect a posteriori, but the latter of justification of the cause, a priori. Thus Luke enjoins mercy, 'Be ye merciful' (Lk. 6:36) which Deuteronomy forbids, 'Thou shalt not pity' (Dt. 19:13). The former refers to private persons, the latter to magistrates. Or they are not said in the same respect, as when Matthew denies the presence of Christ in the world, 'Me ye have not always' (Mt. 26:11*); and yet it is promised, 'I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world' (Mt. 28:20). The former is said with regard to his human nature and bodily presence, but the latter with regard to his divine nature and spiritual presence. Or the statements are not made with reference to the same thing, as when something is said absolutely and another comparatively. 'Honor thy father' (Ex. 20:12); 'if any man hate not his father' (Lk. 14:26). The former must be understood absolutely, the latter comparatively for loving less and esteeming less than Christ. Or not in the same time, hence the expression 'distinguish times and you will reconcile Scripture.' Thus at one time circumcision is extolled as a great privilege of the Jews (Rom. 3:1*); at another it is spoken of as a worthless thing (Gal. 5:3). But the former refers to the Old Testament dispensation when it was an ordinary sacrament and a seal of the righteousness of faith, but the latter concerns the time of the gospel after the abrogation of the ceremonial law. At one time the apostles are sent to the Jews alone by a special mission before the passion of Christ and prohibited from going to the Gentiles ('Go not into the way of the Gentiles,' Mt. 10:5); at another they are sent to all nations by a general mission after the resurrection (Mk. 16:15).

The contradictions (antilogia) found in Scripture are apparent, not real; they are to be understood only with respect to us who cannot comprehend and perceive the agreement everywhere, but not in the thing itself. And if the laws of legitimate contradiction are attended to (that opposites should agree with the same thing [tō autō], in the same respect [kata to auto], with reference to the same thing [pros to auto] and in the same time [tō autō chronō]), these various apparent contradictions in Scripture might be easily reconciled. For the discourse does not concern the same thing, as when James ascribes justification to works, which Paul denies to them. For the former speaks of declarative justification of the effect a posteriori, but the latter of justification of the cause, a priori. Thus Luke enjoins mercy, 'Be ye merciful' (Lk. 6:36) which Deuteronomy forbids, 'Thou shalt not pity' (Dt. 19:13). The former refers to private persons, the latter to magistrates. Or they are not said in the same respect, as when Matthew denies the presence of Christ in the world, 'Me ye have not always' (Mt. 26:11*); and yet it is promised, 'I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world' (Mt. 28:20). The former is said with regard to his human nature and bodily presence, but the latter with regard to his divine nature and spiritual presence. Or the statements are not made with reference to the same thing, as when something is said absolutely and another comparatively. 'Honor thy father' (Ex. 20:12); 'if any man hate not his father' (Lk. 14:26). The former must be understood absolutely, the latter comparatively for loving less and esteeming less than Christ. Or not in the same time, hence the expression 'distinguish times and you will reconcile Scripture.' Thus at one time circumcision is extolled as a great privilege of the Jews (Rom. 3:1*); at another it is spoken of as a worthless thing (Gal. 5:3). But the former refers to the Old Testament dispensation when it was an ordinary sacrament and a seal of the righteousness of faith, but the latter concerns the time of the gospel after the abrogation of the ceremonial law. At one time the apostles are sent to the Jews alone by a special mission before the passion of Christ and prohibited from going to the Gentiles ('Go not into the way of the Gentiles,' Mt. 10:5); at another they are sent to all nations by a general mission after the resurrection (Mk. 16:15).

The contradictions (antilogia) found in Scripture are apparent, not real; they are to be understood only with respect to us who cannot comprehend and perceive the agreement everywhere, but not in the thing itself. And if the laws of legitimate contradiction are attended to (that opposites should agree with the same thing [tō autō], in the same respect [kata to auto], with reference to the same thing [pros to auto] and in the same time [tō autō chronō]), these various apparent contradictions in Scripture might be easily reconciled. For the discourse does not concern the same thing, as when James ascribes justification to works, which Paul denies to them. For the former speaks of declarative justification of the effect a posteriori, but the latter of justification of the cause, a priori. Thus Luke enjoins mercy, 'Be ye merciful' (Lk. 6:36) which Deuteronomy forbids, 'Thou shalt not pity' (Dt. 19:13). The former refers to private persons, the latter to magistrates. Or they are not said in the same respect, as when Matthew denies the presence of Christ in the world, 'Me ye have not always' (Mt. 26:11*); and yet it is promised, 'I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world' (Mt. 28:20). The former is said with regard to his human nature and bodily presence, but the latter with regard to his divine nature and spiritual presence. Or the statements are not made with reference to the same thing, as when something is said absolutely and another comparatively. 'Honor thy father' (Ex. 20:12); 'if any man hate not his father' (Lk. 14:26). The former must be understood absolutely, the latter comparatively for loving less and esteeming less than Christ. Or not in the same time, hence the expression 'distinguish times and you will reconcile Scripture.' Thus at one time circumcision is extolled as a great privilege of the Jews (Rom. 3:1*); at another it is spoken of as a worthless thing (Gal. 5:3). But the former refers to the Old Testament dispensation when it was an ordinary sacrament and a seal of the righteousness of faith, but the latter concerns the time of the gospel after the abrogation of the ceremonial law. At one time the apostles are sent to the Jews alone by a special mission before the passion of Christ and prohibited from going to the Gentiles ('Go not into the way of the Gentiles,' Mt. 10:5); at another they are sent to all nations by a general mission after the resurrection (Mk. 16:15).

Our stores had provided the first job for thousands of people over the course of almost 30 years. And it was a training ground for ambitious employees to become managers and learn how to run a business. How to hire and train great employees. How to merchandise stores. How to manage costs and understand an income statement. And most important, how to build teams of people who understood and bought into common goals. Those teams of people built the longest lasting chain of Blockbuster stores in the country. It always seemed more like a mission than work.

Knowing and understanding your organization’s purpose is essential to making important organizational decisions. It’s also a fundamental tool to use when asking for money, recruiting additional board members, hiring and motivating staff, and publicizing your activities. Also, remember that your governing board’s input in developing the mission statement is not an option. Buy-in begins with inclusion!

how important it is to have a personal mission statement of what

Here are a few recommendations: Brainstorm on a piece of paper everything that invigorates you and connect the dots. Think back to what you enjoyed doing as a child. Explore what you enjoy doing in your spare time or as a hobby. List all of your strengths and reflect on them. Ask others for help if you find it hard to list your strengths. Write your own personal mission statement, i.e. what would you like to specifically offer the world or actually have written on your gravestone? Ask your Soul for guidance in the form of a prayer. Ask yourself, “How can I best give my gift away to others?” Whatever answer makes you want to cry with joy is your meaning in life. Repeat these recommendations until something bursts into your awareness and takes your breath away.

The iron law of bureaucracy dictates that most of the people in any large organization will, after a time, be more preoccupied with preserving their own jobs than with fulfilling the mission statement of the agency.

Culture is not like a mission statement; you can’t just set it up and have it last forever. There’s a saying in the military that if you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard.

products are dramatically cheaper than Apple’s. Culture is not like a mission statement; you can’t just set it up and have it last forever. There’s a saying in the military that if you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard. This is also true of culture—if you see something off-culture and ignore it, you’ve created a new culture. Meanwhile, as business conditions shift and your strategy evolves, you have to keep changing your culture accordingly. The target is always moving.

Viktor Frankl shared a brilliant insight about developing mission statements. He said, “The thing I learned is that you don’t invent your mission, you detect it. You uncover it, as it were.” You see, everyone has special gifts, unique qualities, and characteristics. And they need to work inwardly until they detect those aspects.

Crafting a compelling vision and mission statement is foundational to defining the purpose and direction of a school, guiding decision-making and fostering a sense of shared purpose.

A mission statement articulates the school's purpose, outlining how it plans to achieve its vision through its unique approaches, values, and educational philosophy.

Vision and mission statements serve as guiding principles, shaping the school's identity and informing strategic initiatives to fulfil its overarching goals.

Displaying vision and mission statements prominently in the school environment can shape organizational culture and align stakeholders toward a common vision.

Through crafting compelling vision and mission statements, schools can articulate their unique identity, values, and goals, fostering a cohesive and purpose-driven organizational culture

A mission statement provides a roadmap for action, outlining the strategies, values, and resources that the school will leverage to achieve its overarching vision.

Crafting compelling vision and mission statements demands a delicate balance between aspiration and realism, ensuring they are both inspiring and achievable.

Vision and mission statements are not just words; they are guiding principles that shape the trajectory of a school and steers it toward a desired future.

An often-overlooked aspect of crafting vision and mission statements is understanding the school's unique identity, which requires extensive stakeholder engagement to capture diverse perspectives and values.

Vision and mission statements must align with the expectations and educational objectives of the school's stakeholders and target audience.

Achieving the right balance in vision and mission statements showcases the school's commitment to setting ambitious goals while acknowledging its current resources and capabilities.

Creating compelling vision and mission statements requires a deep understanding of the school's ethos, values, and strengths, obtained through thorough stakeholder consultation and reflection.

Alignment with educational standards is crucial when crafting vision and mission statements, as it ensures that the school's objectives are in line with broader educational benchmarks and requirements.

While the vision should be aspirational and inspiring, the mission statement must be concise yet clearly articulating the school's purpose and how it plans to achieve its goals.

A school's reputation and image are greatly enhanced by compelling vision and mission statements, especially when backed by consistent action and commitment.

A School’s vision and mission statements are not just words on paper; they embody the school’s commitment to shaping the future of education.

A vision inspires and a mission guides.

A school’s vision and mission statements aim to communicate her values, aspirations, and commitment to excellence, thereby attracting those who share her vision for the future.

1. MISSION. Develop a short statement of one to five sentences that describes why a role exists. For example, “The mission for the customer service representative is to help customers resolve their questions and complaints with the highest level of courtesy possible.” 2. OUTCOMES. Develop three to eight specific, objective outcomes that a person must accomplish to achieve an A performance. For example, “Improve customer satisfaction on a ten-point scale from 7.1 to 9.0 by December 31.” 3. COMPETENCIES. Identify as many role-based competencies as you think appropriate to describe the behaviors someone must demonstrate to achieve the outcomes. Next, identify five to eight competencies that describe your culture and place those on every scorecard. For example, “Competencies include efficiency, honesty, high standards, and a customer service mentality.

I find the process is as important as the product. Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs. As you do, other people begin to sense that you’re not being driven by everything that happens to you. You have a sense of mission about what you’re trying to do and you are excited about it.

It’s an interesting process, because as we find out who we are, we also find an energy and focus to our lives. Often this process involves detection, rather than selection; it’s something that we discover inside ourselves. Sometimes people say to me: “Blaine, I’ve thought about it a lot and nothing really specific and concrete is coming to mind. What am I going to do?” Usually what comes to mind is the old line the gentleman says, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.

write your personal mission statement. This is your personal brand.

We all lead three lives: our public life, our private life, and our deep inner life.

the mission statement that has guided Khan Academy since day one: To provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere

difference between a vision statement and a mission statement in an organization. The vision is the public statement of the founder’s intent, WHY the company exists. It is literally the vision of a future that does not yet exist. The mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principles—HOW the company intends to create that future. When both of those things are stated clearly, the WHY-type and the HOW-type are both certain about their roles in the partnership. Both are working together with clarity of purpose and a plan to get there. For it to work, however, it requires more than a set of skills, it requires trust.

Zeryth’s smile glittered. “I took the liberty of writing to Ahzeen Mikov to tell him of your arrival today. He is always so eager to have important guests, after all.” Of course. Ahzeen cared about nothing more than status, and hosting high-ranking members of the Orders was certainly an honor — especially if it came at the personal behest of the Arch Commandant. “In fact,” Zeryth went on, “he was so glad to be receiving such honored visitors that he wrote back with invitations to an event he’s hosting tonight. A celebration of victory, apparently, over one of his enemy Lords. Receiving the generals home, flaunting his great wealth and vast power, all of that.” I was very familiar. I had danced at so many of those parties, flirting for silvers at a time. But my mind snagged on one particular phrase: receiving the generals home. Serel was a guard. Serel was fighting Ahzeen’s wars. And Serel, perhaps, would be among those returning. “This is your mission. It’s your choice how you want to approach it.” Zeryth shrugged. “But, if you wanted to attend…” He reached into the inside of his coat and pulled out two folded pieces of paper. One was a Stratagram, presumably the mate to the one Zeryth laid out at the Mikov Estate. And the other was a foiled invitation with words inscribed in flowery Thereni script. “If I recall correctly, you’re very fond of dramatic statements at fancy parties.” He offered me nothing more than a shrug and a smirk as he turned and sauntered off, leaving me standing there, looking down at that platinum paper and running my thumb over the raised lily sigil. Every powerful Lord in Threll would be there. All in one room, ready to bear witness to what one former slave could become. And how poetic it would be, to devour Esmaris’s legacy where it had once devoured me, little by little, night after night. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t appealing.

your destination is the values you want to live your life by. Even if you are off course much or most of the time but still hang on to your sense of hope and your vision, you will eventually arrive at your destination. You will arrive at your destination and usually on time. That’s the whole point—we just get back on course.

What is our North Star? Why do we exist? Can we clearly articulate why the world is better with our organization in it? What difference do we make? How can people help? How are our founding values specifically relevant to the world today? Who are they relevant to? What headlines do we want to be written about us in the future? What are some characteristics, beliefs, values, and passions that are common to our customers? Are those same characteristics common to our employees? How does that impact the character of the company and why people love us? Are our employees part of our community? Would they lead it? Is our company mission statement the same as our purpose? Why or why not? Is there a seed of an idea there? How is the world changing in a way that unites us with our community? Why do our customers buy our products? Is it because of a shared belief or value system? Do our customers share a vision of the world? What would our future look like if customers helped us build it? How could a community serve and inspire our customers in a way we’re not offering today? Are there people we care about who feel isolated and could benefit from a community? What’s a problem we can only solve together through community? How would a community help us practice what we preach? Whose dreams are we fulfilling?

It was one of many briskly written yet impactful mission statements in Palahniuk’s book, which earned positive reviews from a few major critics—the Washington Post called it “a volatile, brilliantly creepy satire”—as well as the author’s own father. “He loved it,” Palahniuk says. “Just like my boss thought I was writing about his boss, my dad thought I was writing about his dad. It was the first time we really connected.

A personal mission statement is based on Habit Two of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People called “Begin with the End in Mind.” In one’s life, the most effective way to begin with the end in mind is to develop a mission statement, one that focuses on what you want to be in terms of character and what you want to do in reference to contributions and achievements. It is based upon self-chosen values and principles. Victor Hugo once said, “There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come.” A mission statement is that idea. You may call it a credo or a philosophy; or you may call it a purpose statement. It’s not important what it is called. What is important is that vision, purpose, and values are more powerful, more significant, and more influential than the baggage of the past or the accumulated noise of the present.

power of the personal mission statement lies in your vision and in a commitment to that vision, that purpose, and those principle-centered values. They will control your decisions, determine your outlook, and provide the direction for your future. The single most important and far-reaching leadership activity that you will ever do is to develop a personal mission statement—and then to bring that sense of mission, of purpose, to your family. This book is a simple, short guide to developing your personal mission statement. After you develop your personal mission statement, consider also developing one with your family as described in the separate book How to Develop Your Family Mission Statement.

you understand the purpose of a personal mission statement. It is the picture of where you want to end up—that is, your destination is the values you want to live your life by. Even if you are off course much or most of the time but still hang on to your sense of hope and your vision, you will eventually arrive at your destination. You will arrive at your destination and usually on time. That’s the whole point—we just get back on course. This idea—this principle—of beginning with the end in mind is based upon the concept that all things are created twice: first in the mind, as a thought or intellectual creation; and second in reality as a physical creation. The mental creation, the flight plan, brings forth the hope in the flight. Norman Cousins taught, “The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It gives human beings a sense of destination and the energy to get started.” At the beginning of this process you will find enormous hope and encouragement as well as fun and happiness in developing a mission statement. It’s truly an enjoyable process. It’s also a leadership process. But here’s something to think about carefully.

Nietzsche: “He who has a ‘why’ can live with any ‘what.’” Dr. Frankl hypothesized that we have three parts to our nature: our body, our mind, and our spirit. But his deepest conviction is that most—not all—diseases originate in the spirit. That is, in a sense of meaninglessness, a sense of hollowness, a sense of purposelessness. No mission. No vision.

Clearly articulated goals aligned with your vision and mission statements motivate you and galvanize your efforts to move forward towards your dream.

Be able to “deconstruct” your mission statement into highly meaningful and prescriptive phrases.

Articulate where in IT and its staff you can put your mission statement to immediate practical use as a guideline or filter: In metrics In recruitment Elsewhere within IT

A person has to have a target, a goal, a mission statement, a dream, a vision of what she/he wants to accomplish, or nothing lasting will be realized.

This relationship starts to clarify the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement in an organization. The vision is the public statement of the founder’s intent, WHY the company exists. It is literally the vision of a future that does not yet exist. The mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principles—HOW the company intends to create that future.

Ultimately, all church mission statements have certain common threads. They contain a vertical dimension such as loving and obeying God. And they emphasize a horizontal dimension: how Christians treat those both inside and outside the church. They answer the question of why God left the church here on earth. The secret of success is not the wording but the fact that the people of the board have dug the mission statement out of the Bible for themselves, have decided to commit their church to it, and have made it theirs.

company’s new mission statement hung proudly atop the front wall: To enhance our community’s aggregate through multi-platform metrics of media synergy catalyzing integrated outcomes of macro-disciplines toward inclusive methodology paradigms generating positive algorithms of unwavering commitment to our children, the flag and God.

Old school mission statements defined what an organization did. Contemporary mission statements define why an organization does what it does.