Winning Workplaces

Late in my tenure at a previous employer, which had around 70 employees at the time, the leadership asked its department heads to have their employees meet to come up with a department mission statement statement. Pretty much everyone knew the company mission statement, and this was a chance to build on that by having each department tweak it (use it as a starting place) to create mission statements that accurately reflected how their work made the main mission possible.

It was a fantastic exercise, and I remember that my department members and I felt a lot more clarity around our work after the culminating all-staff meeting, in which leadership passed out copies of all the newly minted departmental mission statements. And in which we read and discussed each of them, giving everyone a chance to comment and suggest revisions.

Unlike company mission statements, which tend to not change – or at least not much – unless the business model changes drastically, department mission statements are more malleable. And they should be, as individual group roles and responsibilities change to match current projects; and as people enter and exit the organization.

I did a little research on "micro," "inner," and "department" mission statements and couldn't find a whole heck of a lot, which surprised me. I did find this Canadian newspaper article about a city fire chief who recently involved stakeholders (firefighters as well as police officers) in crafting a fire department-specific mission statement, which they then shared with their city council. Here's what Rhéaume Chaput and his team came up with:

The Belleville [Ontario] Fire Department is committed to serving the community through excellence in emergency response, prevention, education, protection and public safety.

We think of firefighters as serving the function for which they're named, but not as much in terms of, say, prevention and education. The new statement will no doubt provide an even greater sense of direction for Chaput's team – which, in turn, will help them get closer to reaching their very lofty goal of making Belleville one of the safest places in all of Canada.

Has your business considered or acted on drafting department-specific mission statements? If so, how has that affected team building and productivity?

Photo credit: WHS Online