Assurance to the Afflicted (this is a good one!)

In business (and in organizations generally) your mission is VERY important. Thereis a lot of talk these days about leadership. It is a very sexy subject and advice on the topic abounds. But, we could get a good definition of leadership from the oldest of organizations, the military. The military is a great place to learn leadership. And one way of viewing leadership is that it is, “Managing for the mission.”

This is an important characterization of leadership because it is ACTIONABLE. A lot of books, and gurus, will tell you that leadership is about character traits like charisma or extroversion. And that is just not true. Leadership is not about character traits. Leaders come in all shapes and sizes. Leadership is about action, it is about behaviors. So, to construe leadership as managing for the mission is very useful.

Obviously the first step is to define the mission. Defining the mission is the first step of all leadership. What are you trying to get done? We are all familiar with Mission Statements and most of them are quite hollow. Just like the definition of leadership, you want your mission statement to be operational.

So when Sam Walton said, “Always the lowest price,” his employees knew what to do. And when Larry Page and Sergey Brin say their mission is, “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” people know what's expected. Now, there are a number of reasons why Walmart and Google are the best in their categories. But do not sleep on the mission statement. These beautiful missions are a big part of these company's success.

A while back Peter Drucker was working with the emergency room of a hospital. Drucker is known for being a management thinker, and he was. But that does not just mean business. Towards the end of his life, Peter spent a lot of time working with not-for-profit companies like churches, universities, and hospitals.

This particular emergency room was struggling. Their performance was sub-par. With Drucker's help, they eventually came up with a beautiful mission. But it took a while. You see, when Drucker interviewed people, and asked them what they do, the most common answer was, “Health care.” In fact, most hospitals seem to say they are in the business of health care. But that is wrong. As we both know, hospitals do not take care of healthy people. Pretty much, by definition, they take care of sick people. A better phrase would be, “Sick Care.”

This is not just some cute game of semantics. It is very important. Like I have mentioned, your mission needs to be actionable, otherwise people get confused. And, as we know, confused people do not do much. For a hospital worker to say they are in health care is ridiculous. And it leads to a lot of inefficiencies.

What Drucker found was that about 80% of the patients who come to the ER cannot be helped by a doctor. Meaning, there is nothing wrong with them that a doctor's intervention could fix. It pretty much is a case of, “Take two of these and call me in the morning.” For eight out of ten people, time and rest (and maybe a pill) are the only solution. When I first heard that I had a hard time believing it. But then I surveyed people in my sphere and I'll be damned if it was not almost that exact ratio.

This does not mean we should turn people away from the emergency room. ER doctors do serve a very valuable purpose. Though it is probably not the purpose you would usually think. The main benefit, an emergency room doctor can provide his patients, is to give, “Assurance to the afflicted.” Meaning, the main benefit is psychological. Their mission is psychological. The emotion at work is fear/anxiety. (somebody should write a blog about emotions)

Physicians are not trained in psychology but, paradoxically, that is exactly the service these doctors provide. When somebody has something wrong with them, they basically want to hear a trained professional, in a white lab coat, tell them that they're not going to die. There's a lot of value to that service.

For the purposes of this post, I want to highlight the absolute beauty of this mission statement. It is completely actionable! Once these workers knew their job was to give assurance to the afflicted, they knew the exact steps they needed take. For example, they created a policy whereby everybody who comes in is now seen by a qualified person in less than a minute. That qualified person doesn't have to be a doctor. But it is someone affiliated with the hospital. Just knowing that people are aware of you, and your situation, is very reassuring. And though many people might argue the point, the truth is that 80% of the people who visit the emergency room are really looking for assurance.

With all that said, let me be very clear about one thing. Like many things, a beautiful mission statement is only obvious and simple in hindsight. The process of writing a mission statement can be very difficult and time consuming. The rub is that it will save you lots of time in the long run. That is the paradox. If you tell me you do not have enough time to create a mission statement, I would say you do not have enough time to not create a mission statement. Just sayin'.