I have to admit that I haven’t been a big proponent of Mission and Vision Statements for companies. Sometimes they seem helpful but just as often they seem like the product of a management team stuck at a company retreat and led by a facilitator to come up with something. Under duress they do, and it reads like just that.
More recently, I’ve been reading about personal Purpose Statements. I’ve been surprised by my reaction to these. They resonate with me. So much so that I’ve come up with one of my own. We’ll get to that in a moment.
Two articles put me over the edge on this topic. The first was a short piece in the periodical I receive from The Foster School of Business, where I attended. The current Dean of the Foster School is Frank Hodge. He started in academia as an accounting professor. As one might expect from an accounting professor, he is described as empathetic and compassionate but not prone to being overly emotional.
Dean Hodge’s Purpose Statement is, “My purpose as a faculty member and leader is to inspire and enable others to achieve a level of success they would not have achieved on their own.” That comes pretty close to what I’ve settled on, although I think I’ll continue to work on it, so it may change subtly with time.
The second article that gave me a little extra push towards developing my own Purpose statement was the topic of my blog two weeks ago, Daniel Pink’s Seven Questions to Ask Yourself. That helped me move this personal project forward.
So, what have I come up with? I borrowed heavily from Dean Hodge, as his is quite close to how I see my Purpose. Here is what I’ve come up with:
“My Purpose as a business consultant is to inspire and enable others, especially my clients, to achieve a level of success they would not have achieved on their own.”
It isn’t word-for-word the same as Dean Hodge, but I also didn’t feel the need to modify it much. It describes how I view my relationship with my clients and others, and how I see the impact I’ve been able to make, something I’m very proud of.
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