The Importance of Shared Vocabulary

I think at this point in the blog that we all agree that it is important for non-profit organizations and their leaders to have and truly understand their missions in order to properly protect them. Although this seems like a relatively simple concept, I am realizing more and more that it might not be.

I recently came across this article in the Harvard Business Review Blog. The post presents the idea that a non-profit’s mission is as important to profits in the private sector. Private sector business judge their success on increasing profits and spend a lot of time and energy in creating system to guarantee this success. Do non-profit organizations spend the same amount of energy on their mission? Although this debate is fascinating, I am going to leave it to another blog post. The element of this blog post that stuck out to me was the definition of a mission, the author provided the following definition, “An effective mission statement must be a clear description of where an organization is headed in the future that distinctly sets it apart from other entities and makes a compelling case for the need it fills.”

Is this how everyone in the industry defines the concept of mission? Not in my experience, or in the experience of the commenters of the blog.. I am currently working with two organizations on strategic planning and we have defined the mission as, what the organization is currently doing. This discrepancy is a bit concerning to me. If we are trying to professionalize and grow the non-profit industry, why don’t we have a shared language? How can we support the development and protection of missions if it is unclear what a mission is?  

There are many potential ways to address this issue but in my opinion the systemic changes of building a cohesive and collaborative community is a good first step. By collaborating, leaders will share their ideas, learn from one another and build a shared vocabulary and industry standard.  

What is your organization’s mission? How did you determine it? Are you working in collaboration with others to create and fulfill it?  How do you think that we should build this increased collaboration? I would love to hear different opinions on the topic.