1353: Replacing Mission Statements with Invitation Statements by Steve Pavlina on Personal & Professional Growth

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[00:00:28] Slows. This is Optimal Work Daily, episode 1353. Replacing Mission Statements with Invitation Statements. By Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com. And I am Dan, I'm your host and narrator here and I'm with you every single day of the week, including weekends and holidays, bringing you this great content that focuses

[00:00:49] on work and productivity, entrepreneurship, and a whole lot more. So let's hear now from one of the authors who we feature quite regularly both here and across our network of podcasts, Steve Pavlina, as we optimize your life. Replacing Mission Statements with Invitation Statements.

[00:01:10] By Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com. Google's corporate mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Facebook's mission is to give the people power to build community and bring the world closer together.

[00:01:27] Android's mission statement is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. The mission statement of Amazon is, we strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience.

[00:01:43] What I find interesting about these and many other mission statements is that they're about empowerment. They're about giving people greater abilities, access, and resources. They're also infinite in scope. There will always be more information to organize, more communities to build, more people and

[00:01:59] organizations to serve, and more selection and convenience to develop. Moreover, these missions aren't necessarily at odds with each other. They can all coexist. They could cooperate with each other. Imagine if we combined all four of these companies into one and gave them a singular mission statement.

[00:02:17] What would that look like? Let's pull out the key elements first. Organize information, provide useful access, empower people, build community, grow closer, achieve more, save money, expand options, and improve accessibility. I think we can compress this a bit more since some items are related.

[00:02:37] Organize information, empower people, connect people, achieve more, expand options, and improve accessibility. Ultimately, I think we could compress this all the way to just one item. Empower people. I'd say this is pretty close to the mission of the Pakleds in the Star Trek The Next Generation

[00:02:55] episode Samaritan's Snare. We look for things that make us go. Unfortunately, when the Enterprise crew tries to graciously help the Pakleds, the Pakleds kidnap the chief engineer and make him do their bidding without consent. The Pakleds don't see a problem with this. They're just following their normal mission.

[00:03:13] I find it interesting that what's missing from these mission statements, and countless others, is consent. If you think about it, there's a certain aggressiveness and pushiness to them. Organizing the world's information requires capturing it. The world has a lot of information, much of it stored in people's brains.

[00:03:29] Google's mission as is would require getting at these contents and making them accessible to all. Facebook's mission could be seen as pushing some people to connect in ways they may not want to. Does everyone want to be nudged closer together?

[00:03:41] What if some people don't consent to that and would rather keep their distance? Communities empowered by Facebook are already impacting our lives in ways we didn't consent to. That's true even for people who've never directly participated in the service. Where did we consent to achieving more?

[00:03:56] Not everyone wants that. Some are quite content achieving the same or less. Yet Microsoft's mission is to give the gift of increased productivity to everyone quote unquote on the planet. How does a child consent to this? Wouldn't that mission eventually lead us to Borg implants from birth?

[00:04:13] If you're an Amazon customer, do you necessarily want the lowest possible prices? Is that even a good idea? What if you prefer higher quality at higher prices but with less waste, reduced environmental impact and more sustainability? Non-customers have to endure the impacts of this mission without their consent.

[00:04:30] Can anyone simply spin up a new global mission and foist it upon us without our consent? Yes, presently they can, and they do. And this will continue because packlets are abundant in the galaxy. This non-consent aspect of corporate missions gives rise to much resistance though.

[00:04:46] Other people and organizations eventually start pushing back, especially when they're being personally affected by missions they don't agree with. When someone else defines a mission whose impact will affect your life even if you never become

[00:04:57] a customer, isn't there a part of you that wants to respond, how dare you? Or you arrogant p***y or something worse? What's the alternative though? While I don't think it's realistic to predict all of the ripples a business may create over

[00:05:10] time, especially a big one, I do think we can at least consider the consent angle and develop less aggressive, more consent-based statements that still empower people. At the very least, some common sense could be used.

[00:05:23] With billions of people on Earth, there's a good chance that someone will object no matter what mission statement you come up with, so it probably shouldn't be about pushing some transformation for everyone on Earth. You can limit it to those who'd accept and appreciate it.

[00:05:36] So perhaps a better statement for Microsoft would be, to empower people and organizations who invite and appreciate Microsoft's help and support to achieve more. Now it's an invitation, not something you're forcefully ramming down my throat. I feel less resistance towards it.

[00:05:51] The revised statement would give me squishier feelings towards Microsoft. The old statement makes me feel inclined to object, or at least to make jokes about it, mainly because the everyone on the planet aspect is ridiculous and stupid.

[00:06:04] Maybe I'll make it my mission to help everyone at Microsoft acknowledge this. Here's a thought. What if we did away with mission statements altogether? How about if we replace mission statements with invitation statements instead? Invitations are much more agreeable.

[00:06:18] Invite people to participate in your vision to create a better future, but don't push your vision on the whole world, because people will fight you on that. If you force your mission onto people without consent, so much of your otherwise creative

[00:06:30] energy will be wasted on defending yourselves eventually, and you'll deserve that kind of response. Invite people to your party, but don't make attendance mandatory. And show some respect for your neighbors who may be affected by the party. You don't have permission to change the whole world.

[00:06:46] Maybe you think you don't need permission and you can do it anyway, and you can use that frame, but it will result in a rising resistance because that framing is violent. If you want to set yourself up for fight because you think it's noble or something, that's

[00:06:59] up to you. But then you have no right to be surprised, shocked, or outraged when people push back, because that's a predictable outcome of your framing. It's awesome to empower people and kudos for doing that.

[00:07:11] But consider the benefits of inviting consent for where, when, and how you do this. If it's a cool invitation, people will say yes and show up. And even when they decline, they may still appreciate being invited.

[00:07:23] This means less energy wasted on defending against rising resistance, and more energy you can invest in throwing bigger, better, and more interesting parties. Parties that make us go. You just listened to the post titled Replacing Mission Statements with Invitation Statements by Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com.

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[00:08:49] You need Indeed. And thank you so much to Steve for partnering with us and letting us share his work for so long. If you didn't know, Steve Pavlina was actually one of the very first authors we started narrating here across all of our shows.

[00:09:03] He writes about personal development, money, health, relationships, and business, which as luck would have it is currently pretty much the lineup of podcasts that we have covering those very same topics. So you're going to hear his articles across all of our shows.

[00:09:16] Steve is widely recognized as one of the most successful personal development bloggers in the world, with his work attracting more than 100 million visits to stevepavlina.com. He's now written more than 1,500 articles and recorded many audio programs. Conscious growth has been the central focus of Steve's life.

[00:09:33] He studies what it means to grow and how we can deliberately invite, process, and integrate new growth experiences. So again, come by stevepavlina.com for so much more and to show him some support. But that's it for another edition of Optimal Work Daily.

[00:09:48] I hope you enjoyed the post from Steve, that your weekend gets off to a great start if you're listening in real time, and I'll see you right back here tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.