The Five Purposes Tool

A great exercise you can use in defining your mission is the Five Purposes Tool.  I have used it successfully in my consulting practice.  It is based on the Rick Warren book “The Purpose Driven Life”.  In that book, Pastor Warren provides a template of the 5 purposes we are here for on this earth and in this life.

My thought was that it would also make sense that there would be five purposes to be at work (of course, five purposes to be a family member as well, etc.).  I followed Rick’s template and just secularized the purposes.  The following are the 5 purposes that I came up with for a client in the real estate industry so that you can get the feel for the process.

1. To create value in real estate for all of our stakeholders.
2. To create a community and communities.
3. To debate, define and document our core values and principles; and then to indoctrinate and exemplify them.
4. To serve the whole by doing our part and to be part of a synergistic team; 1 + 1 = 11
5. To feed the family by spreading the word

Another example would be the five purposes that I proposed for my teammates at Somerset CPAs:

1. To work as a partner with our clients to define and then achieve their goals; to be passionate about the success of our clients.
2. To create a viable, sustainable community rather than merely a workplace.
3. To debate, define and document our core values and governing principles, and then to indoctrinate and exemplify them.
4. To serve the whole by doing our part and value each other’s differences, thereby creating a synergistic team where 1 + 1 = 11.
5. To feed the family by spreading the word so we can continue to attract and retain the best team members and clients.

Completing this exercise will help you focus and communicate your mission.

Please share your five purposes with us!

Creating Happiness!

Another key element to assist you in brainstorming your organization’s mission statement is to remember our goal.  To achieve enlightenment through the reduction of suffering until no more suffering exists.  The positive way to frame removing suffering is to restate our goal into creating happiness. 

Therefore, our mission statements must contain our core process by which we are going to create happiness in the world.  We must create happiness for all of the stakeholders, customers, team members, vendors, stockholders, and community.

The easiest way to brainstorm on happiness creation is to think of it in terms of removing key frustrations.  Find the answers to the questions of what the key frustrations are of all of the stakeholders and come up with a plan to reduce or eliminate some of those and you will create an unstoppable force for you mission statement.

This process will work for you at a personal level as well.  Your goal in your organizations and families should be to reduce the frustrations of those around you; your bosses and spouses; your peers and co-workers; your friends; and your employees and children.

The better you get at this, the more you will be valued in this life.

How do you create happiness for others, please share!

Like Minds - The County of Bhutan - Gross National Happiness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Gross National Happiness (GNH) is an attempt to define quality of life in more holistic and psychological terms than Gross National Product.

The term was coined by Bhutan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in 1972. It signaled his commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan's unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual values. Like many worthy moral goals it is somewhat easier to state than to define, nonetheless, it serves as a unifying vision for the Five Year planning process and all the derived planning documents that guide the economic and development plans to the country.

While conventional development models stress economic growth as the ultimate objective, the concept of GNH claims to be based on the premise that true development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other.

The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.

How are you leading your organziations to be more like Bhutan in the way you measure total economic value added?