From TheCoreProtocols Yahoo group: This one is pretty good: IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF THOSE WE SERVE. Compare that to the previous one: Our mission is to make a significant, positive impact on the healthcare system by changing behaviors and improving outcomes. And before that: APS is dedicated to providing user-friendly, accessible, comprehensive and innovative behavioral healthcare systems that promote teamwork, relationships, and provider partnerships; add value to our client’s services; and improve upon members’ quality of care and outcomes. APS believes that quality is achieved by providing access to the most appropriate care and in the least restrictive setting. And originally: The mission is to be a premier care management company that can flexibly, yet cost effectively, deliver the full continuum of care management services needed to improve total health outcomes; and, more specifically, to assure quality care is provided in the most appropriate and cost-effective setting based on individual… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Mission Statements
Finding the Core
Shared vision as the DNA of an organization . . . It’s common knowledge that Southwest is a successful company, but there is a shocking performance gap between Southwest and its competitors. Although the airlines industry as a whole has only a passing acquaintance with profitability, Southwest has been consistently profitable for more than thirty years. The reasons for Southwest’s success could (and do) fill up books, but perhaps the single greatest factor in the company’s success is its dogged focus on reducing costs. Every airline would love to reduce costs, but Southwest has been doing it for decades. For this effort to succeed, the company must coordinate thousands of employees ranging from marketers to baggage handlers. Southwest has a Commander’s Intent, a core, that helps to guide this coordination. As related by James Carville and Paul Begala: Herb Kelleher [the longest-serving CEO of Southwest] once told someone, “I can… Read more →
A Message That Sticks
John F. Kennedy, in 1961, proposed to put an American on the moon in a decade. That idea stuck. It motivated thousands of people across dozens of organizations, public and private. It was an unexpected idea: it got people’s attention because it was so surprising–the moon is a long way up. It appealed to our emotions: we were in the Cold War and the Russians had launched the Sputnik space satellite four years earlier. It was concrete: everybody could picture what success would look like in the same way. How many goals in your organization are pictured in exactly the same way by everyone involved? My father worked for IBM during that period. He did some of the programming on the original Gemini space missions. And he didn’t think of himself as working for IBM–he thought of himself as helping to put an American on the moon. An accountant who… Read more →
Crafting a Mission Statement by General George S. Patton Jr.
C.K. Prahalad, one of the leading strategic consultants, has said that a mission statement should take less than three minutes to explain to an audience. That is absolute horseshit. Imagine making a declarative statement and then having to take an additional three minutes to explain what you just said. A mission statement should be immediately comprehensible. Three minutes of explanation is three minutes too many. I read a book on George Patton this weekend. Here is his mission statement for the Third Army: I don’t want to get any messages saying that “we are holding our position.” We’re not holding anything! Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding on to anything except the enemy. We’re going to hold on to him by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass. And most of that I included just for context.… Read more →