What’s your mission statement?
Your purpose in life. The words that define your everyday actions.
If you do have a defined mission statement, chances are it hasn’t always been set in stone. It’s evolved over time.
Why? Because values change with experience. Often in unpredictable ways.
Look at the corporate world. For years, blue-blood companies followed the ethos of providing quality products and services. These companies had systems in place to deliver products efficiently. And consumers had both a need for those products and few alternative means of getting them.
Thus, the most powerful companies maintained long reigns of control. And their mission statements only required three words: Trust through quality.
But then some college dropouts tooling around in a garage changed everything. Technology upended the apple cart, first with PC’s, then with the Internet, then with smartphones.
As these innovations took hold, the control companies had long maintained over the buying process went out the window. Consumers now had tangible alternatives. And they no longer had to put up with shoddy customer service, delays or other pain points.
Trust through quality was no longer enough. The companies who evolved their mission statements to meet this new reality maintained their prestigious status. The others withered on the vine.
I call this paradigm shift The Offshoot Effect.
Offshoot effects don’t necessarily force you to do a full 180. But they do require you tweak your modus operandi in order to adapt to a changing situation.
While the corporate world has had to come to terms with offshoot effects for the past quarter century, we, as individuals, have dealt with them our entire lives.
Every time an event in our lives has changed our perspective, it’s left a mark on our mission statement.
Business as usual has no longer been sufficient.
I have seen this firsthand.
My mission statement has long focused on the core concepts of helping others excel and building connections. As a writer, and an introvert, these concepts have seemed the most in line with what I do and who I am.
Outside Words of the West, I’ve largely stayed out of the spotlight. I’ve poured my heart and soul into making the lives of those around me less isolated and more fulfilling. But I rarely took a public stand or made a public statement.
Then Charlottesville happened.
In mid-August of 2017, a group of Neo-Nazis descended on a college town in Virginia to protest the removal of Confederate monuments. The protesters carried torches as they spewed hate and bigotry. Counter protesters soon showed up, and violence ensued. By the time the dust cleared, one counter-protester and two Virginia state troopers had lost their lives.
From far away in Texas, I followed the events with horror. I’d been in the South for more than a decade at that point, and long defended it. This wasn’t the South I knew.
I remember thinking of what friends and family up north would say. See, it’s like we said. They’re all racist and despicable.
That rankled me.
All I had experienced in the South was warmth and kindness. Sure, I had seen the videos of the marches and the violence of the Civil Rights Era, but that was more than a generation removed.
I had seen no inkling of it with my own eyes, until that fateful day. And I didn’t know how to reconcile what I saw, and how I felt.
I reflected for a few days, until I came to a powerful realization.
The story had not been fully written.
Sure, the events of Charlottesville had grabbed all the press, and made other corners of America resent the South ever more. But the South I knew — the land of kindness and decency — was tangible and real. If I could embody those principles and inspire others to do the same, I could change the narrative — even if only by a little.
So, I went back and revised my mission statement, adding the following:
Be a better Southerner and cultivate the goodness that lies within.
Every day, I live into this statement. I make it my purpose to represent what my region has been and can still be.
It has made me more involved, more engaged and more aware of the impact of setting a good example for others.
Yes, as horrifying as the Charlottesville situation was, it served as an inflection point. It created an offshoot effect that has transformed both my personal mission statement and the purposeful journey that accompanies it.
I am not alone in this regard.
We each have our own inflection points that create offshoot effects. Perhaps not as public and horrifying as mine, but no less significant.
The key is to heed the message these sea changes bring to our lives. To use those offshoot effects to adapt our missions and amplify our impact.
For regardless whether we have a mission statement in place or not, we have the capacity to leave our mark on the world. So long as we can adapt to it.
Let’s use that power wisely.