SlideShare a Scribd company logo
1 of 44
Download to read offline
Mission One, Mission Two
Why Our Peer and Consumer Organizations
Get Off Track

I’m Norm DeLisle and I’m the Executive Director of Michigan
Disability Rights Coalition:
Our Mission: “MDRC is a disability justice movement working to
transform communities”
Our Motto: “ With Liberty and Access for All”
Our Attitude: “Feisty and Non-Compliant”
I have been working in the disability community since late 1970,
and I have a long history of depression, anxiety and PTSD
symptoms. Right now, I am doing as well as I ever have in my life.
I’m happy to have this chance to talk to you about a very important
issue.
You should feel free to take care of your needs when they arise,
and ask questions when you think of them.
Why is it so difficult to keep our consumer organizations on track? It
is because we can’t serve just one master and still have a
successful organization. And the fight between those two masters
is demanding and stressful.
Is Your Purpose Fading?

Is it getting tougher to see where you are heading?
We start off strong, full of passion and advocacy fervor. Over time,
that passion fades as we come to grips with the reality of running
an organization. Eventually, it seems as though we have lost our
way, our purpose, and we are overwhelmed with paperwork,
human resources problems, funder political issues, and sheer
exhaustion.
Why?
The short answer is that organizations, just like people, forests,
cars, and mountains, age.
This presentation is the story of how organizations age, and what
you can do to slow and redirect the aging process.
How Organizations Age

Organizations age (some would say, “mature”) because of the
relationship between two obligations they must fulfill. Sometimes
these two obligations support one another, and sometimes they
conflict. The small everyday choices made about how these two
obligations interact are the force that ages the organization.
I call them Mission One and Mission Two.
Mission One is the purpose of the organization, the original reason
why it was created.
Mission Two is the sustaining of the organization; basically, all the
ways the organization maintains, repairs, and grows itself.
Mission One

Mission One is the purpose for which the group or organization was
created. Mission One reflects the valued outcomes for your staff
and members, the people who benefit from your existence.
Mission One motivates board and staff members, or
participants/members because the valued outcomes of Mission
One are so powerful, especially in social justice groups. Mission
One (not the PR version of mission one) always contains elements
that can be expressed in moving and meaningful stories by your
constituents.
Mission Two

Mission Two is the continuation or expansion of the group or
organization. Continuation is so ordinary an aspect of group or
organization work that it is readily confused with Mission One. But,
Mission Two is not Mission One, and can either support or destroy
Mission One.
This tension between Mission One and Mission Two is what drives
the aging of the group or organization.
Sustaining your organization is not just about money. It is about
paperwork, reports, performance appraisals, maintenance, repair,
skills, capacities, experience, commitment, morale, policies, hiring
and firing, and the rest of what we take to be the ordinary day to
day tasks of any group or organization. All of these can be thought
about and implemented without reference to Mission One.
While we often believe (correctly) that Mission Two is necessary for
the survival of Mission One, it is also and always true that every
minute, every dime, every anxiety spent on Mission Two is taken
directly away from Mission One.
An obvious example is the organizational provision of funding
reserves. Reserves are funds that are deliberately not used for
Mission One in order to secure the ongoing survival of the
organization or group in the face of future funding uncertainty. The
time spent building these reserves, planning for their stability and
growth, and their exclusion from consideration for use to provide or
reach Mission One are all examples of how Mission Two detracts
from the achievement of Mission One.
A "Concrete" Example

Creating and Maintaining the American Freeway System:
●
●
●
●
●
●

I grew up in Midland, Michigan, but the rest of my family lived
in Detroit
Pre-Freeway, the trip to visit Detroit was 4 hours on two lane
roads traveling through many little towns
When the freeway was finished, the first trip was one hour
and 15 minutes
Then repairs and maintenance started, and traffic use
increased
Now, if there is no gridlock, the trip is 2 and a half hours
And its getting worse as more maintenance is required

The purpose of the freeway is becoming (more and more) an object
for repair and maintenance and the money that can be made by
doing that, and (less and less) a tool for rapid comfortable
transportation.
Some More Examples

●

New Humans: Brand new humans are full of possibilities, but
as we age, we spend more time maintaining ourselves and
less time learning and exploring possibilities

●

Government: Programs start out with one purpose and
gradually add rules and additional purposes, until they
sometimes end up doing the exact opposite of what they
started out to do.

●

Large Corporations: When businesses start, they typically
have one outcome-a product or a service. As they get bigger,
they may go public and suddenly have shareholders who
don’t care about the product, only how much money they are
making. Often, the largest enterprises are only about money,
and we find financial services corporations betting against
their own customers in order to make money for individual
brokers and managers.
Seeing the Tension

In our ordinary work lives, it can be hard to see the tension
between Mission 1 and Mission 2. Generally, there needs to be a
crisis before that tension is revealed. The crisis can be large, but
doesn’t need to be.
A crisis doesn’t guarantee that we will see the tension between
Mission 1 and Mission 2. We tend to meld the two missions
together and see the crisis as one for the organization, not one for
the conflict between Mission 1 and Mission 2. We try to solve the
crisis without any deep consideration of the impact it is having on
our version of Mission 1 and Mission 2.
I am going to give some examples of crises that point to the tension
between Mission 1 and Mission 2.
Organizational Crises

In the very early life of a new organization or group, it is often
possible to focus only on Mission One-at least for a time. But
eventually, issues related to how the group or organization will
continue arise and begin to dominate the attention of stakeholders:
● Financial Crises
○ Financial Controls
○ Low Level Embezzlement
○ Employee Equity
○ Fundraising flaws
● Governance Crises
○ Board membership stability
○ Board focus on micromanagement
○ Autocratic founders
○ General Political/Social conflicts
● Resource Crises (funds, skills, work demands)
○ Example: A Crisis of Capacity for Mission One
■ MPAS individual advocacy model: I worked at
Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service for 13
years. In the first few years, I was an advocate for
■

■

individuals in a 6 county area in the Thumb. About
half of my work was representing families and
students in conflicts over special education
services.
At first, because we advocates knew the law and
regulations regarding school education
obligations, it was very easy to win these
conflicts. In addition, because we quickly became
good at winning, it was always easier to just solve
the student’s issue by ourselves rather than
involving the family in deep learning about how to
advocate for themselves. This produced two
consequences. One was that the school district’s
gradually got better at understanding special
education rules, and they hired attorneys on
retainer to handle conflicts that came up. They
were smarter about the issues over which they
fought with us, and the issues themselves
became much more complex, requiring more of
our time. The second problem was that once we
helped a family, we could expect them to tell their
friends and show up the next year expecting us to
advocate for their son or daughter again.
This led inevitably to an inability on our part to
respond to the advocacy demands, though it took
several years to reach this point.
This problem of advocacy strategy (Mission 1)
and resources (Mission 2) caused a strategic
crisis. How could MPAS handle this overload?
● Simply increasing funding might slow the
emergence of the crisis, but wouldn’t
change it fundamentally. MDOE estimated
that 10% of education planning meetings
were contentious and would require an
advocate to sort them out, a total of roughly
20,000 a year, requiring roughly 200 full
time advocates who did nothing but special
●

○

education advocacy. This was and is out of
the question.
● Changing the culture of the education
system was an option, but hasn’t moved
much off the dime in the last quarter
century. It would require the commitment of
the organization to a new Mission 1 that
would take decades. However useful such
an outcome would be, the time and funding
required were unrealistic over that long
term.
● We could shift to a community organizing
model in which each advocate would
operate as an organizer with families in their
geographic area to create local advocates
and serve as a support system and a
facilitator of skill development for that
region.
● We could keep the basic mission and
change the model to target priority cases for
advocacy and use an I&R model for the
rest.
■ MPAS chose the last of these because it
preserved the special legal skills accumulated
over the previous decade. Personally, I would
have chosen the community organizing model,
but, then, I’m not an attorney who had committed
their career to disability law, nor someone who
had worked for decades to create accessible legal
services for people with disabilities.
■ But this strategic choice dictated the future of
MPAS-how it supports and continues its activities,
how it judges the issues that its customers bring
to it, how it allocates all of its resources.
■ So, this one crisis required a complete
reformulation of organization’s strategy.
Reaching a limit in a critical resource is a very common
○

problem (a Mission 2 problem) that requires a
reformulation of Mission 1. If you haven’t run into your
version of this yet, you will, if you are successful.
So What Can We Do?
Oh No!!!

Here is what we can’t do:
●
●

Drop either Mission 1 or Mission 2
Come up with an artificial balance between Mission 1 and
Mission 2 (maybe mission 1 days and mission 2 days)
● Create Rules to Ensure Our Commitment to Mission 1 (noting
mission focused activities on our time sheets and reporting
the amounts to the Board)
.
These are all Mission 2 ways of dealing with the problems of
Mission 1 capacity issues. They will undermine Mission 1, even
though they might well support continuation of the organization.
So, Really, What Can We Do?

Some Places to Start:
●
●
●
●
●
●

Create Separate Mission Statements for Mission 1 and
Mission 2
Board members perform Mission 1 critical activities
Managers perform Mission 1 critical activities
Mission 2 staff perform Mission 1 critical activities
Undermine creeping Mission 2ism
Mission 1 Advocacy when making Mission 2 policy changes
Mission Statements

A common pattern for mission statements in nonprofit organizations
is that they become more general and less meaningful over time,
as the focus of the organization shifts from their original purpose to
marketing the organization to stakeholders and funders who do not
necessarily “get” the original purpose.
Think, “Our organization will become the best (definition of
services) provider in this (region, state, national, global, or cosmic)
area”.
I am not implying that we shouldn’t try to make our mission
understandable to people who aren’t deeply involved in our
community, and who don’t understand our code words and jargon.
What I’m really saying is that purpose (Mission 1) and marketing
(Mission 2) are different worlds.
I’m suggesting that organizations have two mission statements:
● One for deep purpose
● One for communicating your work to the truly outside world
Making use of a concept like this would require you to decide
whether a message or communication is for Mission 1 or a MIssion
2, and then use the appropriate statement. It also requires you to
create two mission statements, and we all know how frustrating it is
to create one.
On the other hand, going through the process of making two
mission statements allows those who participate to clearly see the
difference between Mission 1 and 2, and incorporates that
difference into their thinking about what work they do and why they
do it. This is equally true for board members as well as staff-even
for volunteers if you include them in your mission statement
development work.
Board and Mission 1
The Big Picture

Boards are often overwhelmed by their Mission 2 responsibilities,
and have a very abstract notion of what Mission 1 is for the
organization they govern. Over time, Mission 2 displaces their
focus on Mission 1, making it distant and largely irrelevant to the
immediate demands of funding and human resources issues.
Finding effective and enjoyable ways for board members to
participate in truly Mission 1 activities is difficult. But it is the only
effective way I have seen to sharpen the difference in the minds of
board members about the real distinctions between Mission 1 and
Mission 2. Note that lived experience, while helpful in maintaining
the distinction between Mission 1 and Mission 2, is no guarantee
over the long term. Constant and unremitting exposure to the
demands and crises of Mission 2 will whittle awareness of Mission
1 down to nothing over a few years. As Kurt Vonnegut said of his
novel, Mother Night, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must
be careful about what we pretend to be."
Managers and Mission 1
Making Sausage

Managers, regardless of their background or commitment to
Mission 1, have their work lives gradually taken over by Mission 2.
Managerial work is a lot like making sausage-attempting to make
the best tasting concoction you can out of largely unpalatable
components-and the “vision thing” is often degraded into trying to
avoid various kinds of Mission 2 disasters.
This kind of managerial reality has a corrosive effect on
commitment to Mission 1. A manager’s day consists of interruptions
and crises from above and below. Managers become cynical about
the possibilities of genuine change, and feel caught in an economic
trap by the need for a job that pays as well as the one they have.
Managers also need to perform Mission 1 critical activities. They
must actually help a constituent of the organization achieve a
valued outcome. They must keep the link they once had with the
day to day lives of those they serve. This link to the lived
experience of a person is the distinction between empty activities
that look like Mission 1 outcomes and real Mission 1 outcomes.
Mission 2 Staff and Mission 1

In all but the smallest organizations, some staff focus exclusively
on Mission 2 outcomes. A typical example would be staff who focus
on financial and accounting tasks. You want these staff to be
honest and direct about the impact of decisions on the organization’
s finances. You certainly don’t want to discourage them from
reporting problems.
At the same time, senior managers need to make decisions about
Mission 2 problems with Mission 1 in mind. This doesn’t necessarily
mean that you would choose Mission 1 over Mission 2 in a financial
crisis. More likely it means that you have to work harder to come up
with a solution that doesn’t undermine either Mission.
In addition to this basic managerial strategy, you need to find a way
to help Mission 2 staff understand your Mission 1 less abstractly. A
way to do this is to have occasional opportunities for Mission 2 staff
to “shadow” Mission 1 staff in their direct work with the constituents
who are invested in your Mission 1 outcomes. The contact with
lived experience of those who benefit from your Mission 1 will
deepen staff understanding of why you do what you do. It is also
possible (and has been done in Michigan’s CMH system) for
Mission 2 staff to build communication materials that tell
constituents what the financial rules that impact constituent lives
actually mean. The process of struggling to make financial
concepts and rules, easily understood by financial staff, equally
understandable to persons with no financial background, will go a
long way to building a better understanding of Mission 1.
Creeping Mission 2ism

This house is no longer a home.
For this house, Mission 2 has replaced Mission 1, at least until it is
rebuilt.
As our earlier discussion shows, the replacement of Mission 1 by
Mission 2 is not really a single choice. It is many, many choices
generally made over a long period of time, and resulting in Mission
2 gradually becoming the most important, maybe even the only,
valued thing that the organization does.
An example of a common choice point occurs when a staff person
pursues a valued Mission 1 outcome, but undermines a valued
Mission 2 outcome (maybe by spending money not allocated to a
specific budget line).The common response of managers is to
punish the failed Mission 2 outcome, giving the clear message that
Mission 2 is more important than Mission 1.
Other examples would include the use of a policy to deny or
exclude a Mission 1 outcome; refusing to advocate for a Mission 1
outcome because of the political consequences; fudging your
Mission 1 values to a funder either to obtain or keep funding.
Note that these actions are not necessarily bad or even avoidable.
Rather, they are sacrificing Mission 1 to continue the organization
(Mission 2).
Mission 2ism arises because we have to make many many Mission
2 decisions or choices for every Mission 1 decision or choice we
make.
Advocating for Mission 1
Diogenes and His Dog Looking for an Honest Man

A person with a good understanding of your Mission 1 can be given
the responsibility of advocating for Mission 1 values when Mission
2 decisions are made, a sort of devil’s advocate. This responsibility
will anger people who are trying to produce valued outcomes for
Mission 2, and the devil’s advocate will need protection and a clear
organization wide understanding of the purpose of their advocacy.
Any final decision on any issue is the responsibility of senior
managers, but those decisions are supposed to be informed, not
arbitrary, and making sure that the implications for Mission 1 are
public and transparent is an organizational obligation.
More Ideas

No magic formulas here-just some ideas to provoke your
thinking:
● Automate every aspect of Mission 2 outcomes you can, so
that staff don’t have to think about them or develop anxiety
about them. Anxiety makes any triggering event more
important than it really is. Technology has great possibilities
for supporting this process.
● Make Mission 1 outcomes a standard part of the discussions
in every staff meeting, and put them earlier on the meeting
agenda
● Give higher point values to Mission 1 outcomes in
performance evaluations and put them earlier in the
evaluation than Mission 2 outcomes. Better yet, get rid of
performance reviews, which are always biased toward
Mission 2
● Avoid creating personnel policies for low incidence behaviors.
Use progressive discipline instead
● Produce HR policies through full staff consensus as much as
humanly possible
●
●

Use “nudges” instead of policies for HR compliance issues
“Efficiency” is a Mission 2 value, and it is only useful when
applied to an outcome where you can predict the future. So,
many of your financial outcomes can be viewed through the
lens of efficiency. This won’t work for many of your Mission 1
outcomes, like, say, self-determination plans. Forcing
efficiency in outcomes that are marked by the uncertainty of
life will destroy the purpose of such outcomes.
Resources
Copper Mining in the UP

Online Versions of the Slide Presentation:
Slideshare (PDF): http://www.slideshare.net/ndelisle/mission-onemission-two-25775965
Organizational Resources:
SAMHSA (value-driven resources): http://www.samhsa.gov/
World Institute on Disability (value-driven resources): http://wid.
org/resources
Mind Tools (general resources): http://www.mindtools.com/index.
html
Strategic Vision (general): http://goo.gl/bnfODF
Idealist (a combination of general and value-driven): http://goo.
gl/DKTcBT
Nudges Resources:
Rethinking Behavior: Change, Nudge-style: http://goo.gl/jkg4t3
Nudge blog: http://goo.gl/qWo30E
Progressive Discipline:
What is Progressive Discipline?: http://goo.gl/Rx6Gr7
Performance Evaluation:
10 Reasons to Get Rid of Performance Reviews: http://goo.
gl/KyAjan
Your Presenter

I am Norm DeLisle, Executive Director of Michigan Disability
Rights Coalition:
Short Bio: hubby2jill, 2dogs, advocatefor40+yrs, change strategist,
trainer, geezer, pa2Loree, gndpa2Nevin
Email: ndelisle@mymdrc.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mdrcngd
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/disability.norm
Blogs:
Recovery Michigan: http://recoverymi.posthaven.com/
Intentional Change: http://changeintent.posthaven.com/
Disability Futures: http://normdelisle.posthaven.com/
Health and Disability: http://ltcreform.posthaven.com/
Economic Justice: http://economic-justice.posthaven.com/
Evaluations

Don’t forget to fill out the evaluation form!
Last Thoughts
Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.
--Marcus Tullius Cicero
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
--John F. Kennedy
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not
attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
--Helen Keller
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a
consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.
--Bruce Springsteen

Hold to the Mission 1 that means the most to you.
Thanks for Participating

I Appreciate Your Interest!
Further Along The Road...

The slides that follow will show you information that goes beyond
the presentation but will expand your understanding if you want to
review it.
The focus of the following slides is on the more general problem of
having two purposes that sometimes support and sometimes
conflict with each other. A visual guide to this notion is to connect
the two complements with a ~, as in Mission 1 ~ Mission 2. The
tilde indicates that the two purposes sometimes support and
sometimes conflict.
Mission 1 ~ Mission 2

It is obvious that sometimes Mission 1 and 2 support each other
and sometimes they interfere with each other. How should we
understand their relationship? After all, I hope I have made it clear
that you can’t simply ignore one or the other and have a viable
organization.
Pure Mission 1=Explosion, which dies out quickly
Pure Mission 2=Zombie, with no meaningful purpose (except of
course, eating brains!!)
The real issue is how to manage the coordination of these
complements in our day to day organizational lives.
Some of the ways that have been tried in the past to understand
relationships between partly incompatible processes like these
include:
●
●

One is good and one is bad
One is more important than the other
●

Both are important at different times in some cycle or process

Any of these are true sometimes, so picking one isn’t very helpful
as a guide. You’ll end up being wrong too often. We want an
understanding that is more like the yin-yang model, but less
abstract. Most of us don’t have the time or desire to sit in a cave for
20 years meditating on the philosophical possibilities of Taoism to
discover lessons for daily life. We need a model that is more
concrete.
The Adapative Cycle

A model of greater usefulness in looking at the relationship
between Mission 1 and Mission 2 was created for understanding
how forests and other ecosystems age and renew. It is called the
Adaptive Cycle. It is a biological model of how Mission 1 and
Mission 2 interact over the life of an ecosystem=organization in a
cycle of four phases:
1.

2.

3.

Reorganization/Renewal: When purpose is the only driving
force (Mission 1), we try whatever seems possible, up to the
point where we run into resource scarcity.
Growth/Exploitation: We find we must develop a strategy
for growth or maintenance (Mission 2), and we begin to view
our resources as assets that must be nurtured, cultivated,
harvested, and exploited.
Conservation: As we bump into the ultimate limits on our
growth, including our capacities, our markets, and our
competition, we begin to view resources (funding,
capabilities, experience) as long term assets that must be
protected, defended, and, often, hidden from scrutiny.
1.

Release: As conservation continues, and we focus more and
more on Mission 2, we become organizationally brittle, lose
our sense of our original purpose, and our assets and
advantages begin to break down and drift away. Our context
becomes ripe for new purposes and less hidebound beliefs,
often done well outside our current organization.

Our ecosystems have a built-in way to remove the no longer useful.
Those biological organisms are simply eliminated, the ecosystem
itself is simplified, and there remains an environment in which new
organisms can make better use of old resources. Unfortunately, it is
entirely possibly for human organizations to genuinely turn into
zombies without this process of release and renewal occurring. We
can individually and organizationally pretend that we are useful.
Advocacy ~ Engagement

Another example of how complicated purpose complements can be
is Advocacy~Engagement. Adversarial relationships often create
collaboration and engagement. Remember that “War makes for
strange bedfellows”. Traditional advocacy is a purely adversarial
process in which we defend a position, as in a court battle over
legal and substantive outcomes. But even there, some level of
cooperation is required to hold the adversarial contest in a court.
I noticed in my time as an advocate at MPAS, that we often used a
strategy I called “bounded collaboration”. Basically, we would
cooperate until some line was crossed. At that point we became
adversaries.
More recently, I have found that simply taking a position as an
advocate has become less and less fruitful over the years, and that
engagement of the other parties in the stakeholder environment is
necessary to move advocacy along. Most policy implementation
problems these days, especially in health and supports, are very
complex and contain structural problems that must be resolved
before positional advocacy can work at all.
Public Housing

Another Example of a Complement:
The complement I’ll look at here is Segregated Housing ~
Distributed Housing.
Our value of Inclusion says that people with disabilities should have
affordable and accessible housing in the same communities as
everyone else. At the same time, the stigma of disability can make
real inclusion difficult. And the history of trauma can make acquiring
and using the social skills necessary to actually include yourself in
one of those regular communities difficult.
Two models of creating affordable and accessible housing have
developed (with many variations):
●

Segregated Housing: All housing units are part of a single
building project with a focus on a single community (say,
vets, seniors, poor, adults with disabilities), with supports
provided in the building by a single provider
●

Distributed Housing: Each unit is developed and built in the
larger community. Supports are provided to the individual or
family in that individual unit by a provider hired by the
individual or family.

There are specific economic and control reasons why The System
has wanted to create and maintain segregated models of housing:
●

●

●
●

In the creation of plans for housing projects, it is much easier
to propose a single site, with infrastructure, design of
individual units, tax credit use, and the scaling of supports
through a single provider contract
There are economies of scale with a single site for
maintenance and repair of individual units and the project as
a whole.
It is much easier to hide and manage unethical use of project
funds in a single site
It is also easier to enforce control over tenants and sanction
them for violations, both of formal and informal rules, making
it easier to serve the interests of the managers at the
expense of the tenants. Scapegoating and bullying individual
tenants into conformity is much more effective when you tie
supports and loss of lease together. Failure to conform
results in loss of housing, a powerful weapon.

There are also social/emotional reasons that perpetuate
segregated housing and segregated community models:
●

●

Especially in the early phases of recovery, most people prefer
to spend their social time with persons who are experiencing
struggles similar to their own. The first issue in recovery is
usually feeling safe.
The preservation of the feeling of safety, basically relief from
pain whether physical or social, becomes self-perpetuating in
the same way that any relief from any pain does. Not ever
leaving one’s comfort zone becomes a permanent way of
living.
●
●

One accepts the abusive control that project managers exert
as the price for feeling safe.
One’s life becomes permanently constrained

So, segregated housing supports segregated communities, and
vice versa.
One way (one of a huge number of variations) of “complementing”
these two models would be to always separate supports from
residence, so that individual tenants can’t lose tenancy for choosing
a different provider of supports. Another would be to put limits on
the length of time a person can remain in segregated projects. A
third would be to make transition from segregated to distributed
housing a standard part of planning supports and skill building from
the first day of tenancy in a segregated project. All of these would
alter the dynamic of the Segregated Housing ~ Distributed Housing
complement.
Other Complements

Some More Examples of Complements Important in Our Lives:
Health Care ~ Health Costs
Support ~ Personal Autonomy
Learning ~ Choices
Relationships ~ Personal Boundaries
Structure ~ Process
If you are really interested in this idea of complements, there is no
better resource than The Natural Complement by Scott Kelso. You
can find it at http://goo.gl/5l8sq2

More Related Content

Viewers also liked

Change frameworks slides
Change frameworks slidesChange frameworks slides
Change frameworks slidesNorman DeLisle
 
Advocacy 301: next Steps
Advocacy 301: next StepsAdvocacy 301: next Steps
Advocacy 301: next StepsNorman DeLisle
 
Part 2 strategic frameworks
Part 2  strategic frameworksPart 2  strategic frameworks
Part 2 strategic frameworksNorman DeLisle
 
オバマ大統領選挙とソーシャルテクノロジー
オバマ大統領選挙とソーシャルテクノロジーオバマ大統領選挙とソーシャルテクノロジー
オバマ大統領選挙とソーシャルテクノロジーBeat Communication
 
Ptsd the evolution of lived trauma
Ptsd  the evolution of lived traumaPtsd  the evolution of lived trauma
Ptsd the evolution of lived traumaNorman DeLisle
 
Part 1 what is strategy
Part 1  what is strategyPart 1  what is strategy
Part 1 what is strategyNorman DeLisle
 
Presentatie Deadline1 Team15
Presentatie Deadline1 Team15Presentatie Deadline1 Team15
Presentatie Deadline1 Team15lannootje007
 
Your rights as_tools_ppt
Your rights as_tools_pptYour rights as_tools_ppt
Your rights as_tools_pptNorman DeLisle
 
Beat Communication (SNS for Human Resources / Recruitment)
Beat Communication (SNS for Human Resources / Recruitment)Beat Communication (SNS for Human Resources / Recruitment)
Beat Communication (SNS for Human Resources / Recruitment)Beat Communication
 
Part 3 Strategy Implementation Tools
Part 3  Strategy Implementation ToolsPart 3  Strategy Implementation Tools
Part 3 Strategy Implementation ToolsNorman DeLisle
 

Viewers also liked (16)

Change frameworks slides
Change frameworks slidesChange frameworks slides
Change frameworks slides
 
Advocacy 301: next Steps
Advocacy 301: next StepsAdvocacy 301: next Steps
Advocacy 301: next Steps
 
Part 2 strategic frameworks
Part 2  strategic frameworksPart 2  strategic frameworks
Part 2 strategic frameworks
 
オバマ大統領選挙とソーシャルテクノロジー
オバマ大統領選挙とソーシャルテクノロジーオバマ大統領選挙とソーシャルテクノロジー
オバマ大統領選挙とソーシャルテクノロジー
 
About Beat Communication
About Beat CommunicationAbout Beat Communication
About Beat Communication
 
Ptsd the evolution of lived trauma
Ptsd  the evolution of lived traumaPtsd  the evolution of lived trauma
Ptsd the evolution of lived trauma
 
Part 1 what is strategy
Part 1  what is strategyPart 1  what is strategy
Part 1 what is strategy
 
Green IT
Green ITGreen IT
Green IT
 
Presentatie Deadline1 Team15
Presentatie Deadline1 Team15Presentatie Deadline1 Team15
Presentatie Deadline1 Team15
 
Your rights as_tools_ppt
Your rights as_tools_pptYour rights as_tools_ppt
Your rights as_tools_ppt
 
Voor Op Blogger
Voor Op BloggerVoor Op Blogger
Voor Op Blogger
 
Beat Communication(English)
Beat Communication(English)Beat Communication(English)
Beat Communication(English)
 
Beat Communication (SNS for Human Resources / Recruitment)
Beat Communication (SNS for Human Resources / Recruitment)Beat Communication (SNS for Human Resources / Recruitment)
Beat Communication (SNS for Human Resources / Recruitment)
 
Part 3 Strategy Implementation Tools
Part 3  Strategy Implementation ToolsPart 3  Strategy Implementation Tools
Part 3 Strategy Implementation Tools
 
Voor Op Blogger
Voor Op BloggerVoor Op Blogger
Voor Op Blogger
 
Facebook Report
Facebook ReportFacebook Report
Facebook Report
 

Similar to Mission one, Mission two

Collective Impact - Chris Aycock March 2016
Collective Impact - Chris Aycock March 2016Collective Impact - Chris Aycock March 2016
Collective Impact - Chris Aycock March 2016Chris Aycock
 
TUL 560-6-1Christian Microenterprise Development
TUL 560-6-1Christian Microenterprise DevelopmentTUL 560-6-1Christian Microenterprise Development
TUL 560-6-1Christian Microenterprise DevelopmentUrban Leadership Foundation
 
Social enterprise for afp conference session two final
Social enterprise for afp conference   session two finalSocial enterprise for afp conference   session two final
Social enterprise for afp conference session two finalJeff Stern
 
IE Business School Question D - How Leadership Makes A Mark
IE Business School Question D - How Leadership Makes A MarkIE Business School Question D - How Leadership Makes A Mark
IE Business School Question D - How Leadership Makes A MarkAngeline Pearson
 
Getting Behind ISFs - Individual Service Funds
Getting Behind ISFs - Individual Service FundsGetting Behind ISFs - Individual Service Funds
Getting Behind ISFs - Individual Service FundsCitizen Network
 
Ofa organizingmanual part4
Ofa organizingmanual part4Ofa organizingmanual part4
Ofa organizingmanual part4Amy Davidson PhD
 
Volusia County Internship Scenarios
Volusia County Internship ScenariosVolusia County Internship Scenarios
Volusia County Internship ScenariosSheena White
 
Community Organization Intensifies Community Stability And...
Community Organization Intensifies Community Stability And...Community Organization Intensifies Community Stability And...
Community Organization Intensifies Community Stability And...April Wbnd
 
Essay Hard Work Or Luck
Essay Hard Work Or LuckEssay Hard Work Or Luck
Essay Hard Work Or LuckDawn Williams
 
School for Change Agents E-learning modules transcript
School for Change Agents E-learning modules transcriptSchool for Change Agents E-learning modules transcript
School for Change Agents E-learning modules transcriptNHS Horizons
 
The Importance Of Community Development
The Importance Of Community DevelopmentThe Importance Of Community Development
The Importance Of Community DevelopmentKimberly Reyes
 
Death Of A Salesman Essay Conclusion
Death Of A Salesman Essay ConclusionDeath Of A Salesman Essay Conclusion
Death Of A Salesman Essay ConclusionPamela Brown
 
Official Izm Orientation Guide
Official Izm Orientation GuideOfficial Izm Orientation Guide
Official Izm Orientation Guideahenry3
 
Free Muet Essay Sample. Online assignment writing service.
Free Muet Essay Sample. Online assignment writing service.Free Muet Essay Sample. Online assignment writing service.
Free Muet Essay Sample. Online assignment writing service.Joanna Gardner
 
Successful Advocacy: A Values-Based Approach
Successful Advocacy: A Values-Based ApproachSuccessful Advocacy: A Values-Based Approach
Successful Advocacy: A Values-Based ApproachMetropolitan Group
 

Similar to Mission one, Mission two (20)

Collective Impact - Chris Aycock March 2016
Collective Impact - Chris Aycock March 2016Collective Impact - Chris Aycock March 2016
Collective Impact - Chris Aycock March 2016
 
560-6 Christian Micro-Economic Development
560-6 Christian Micro-Economic Development560-6 Christian Micro-Economic Development
560-6 Christian Micro-Economic Development
 
TUL 560-6-1Christian Microenterprise Development
TUL 560-6-1Christian Microenterprise DevelopmentTUL 560-6-1Christian Microenterprise Development
TUL 560-6-1Christian Microenterprise Development
 
Social enterprise for afp conference session two final
Social enterprise for afp conference   session two finalSocial enterprise for afp conference   session two final
Social enterprise for afp conference session two final
 
IE Business School Question D - How Leadership Makes A Mark
IE Business School Question D - How Leadership Makes A MarkIE Business School Question D - How Leadership Makes A Mark
IE Business School Question D - How Leadership Makes A Mark
 
Getting Behind ISFs - Individual Service Funds
Getting Behind ISFs - Individual Service FundsGetting Behind ISFs - Individual Service Funds
Getting Behind ISFs - Individual Service Funds
 
Ofa organizingmanual part4
Ofa organizingmanual part4Ofa organizingmanual part4
Ofa organizingmanual part4
 
Volusia County Internship Scenarios
Volusia County Internship ScenariosVolusia County Internship Scenarios
Volusia County Internship Scenarios
 
Community Organization Intensifies Community Stability And...
Community Organization Intensifies Community Stability And...Community Organization Intensifies Community Stability And...
Community Organization Intensifies Community Stability And...
 
Essay Hard Work Or Luck
Essay Hard Work Or LuckEssay Hard Work Or Luck
Essay Hard Work Or Luck
 
School for Change Agents E-learning modules transcript
School for Change Agents E-learning modules transcriptSchool for Change Agents E-learning modules transcript
School for Change Agents E-learning modules transcript
 
Social
SocialSocial
Social
 
Springboard Guided Tour, v2
Springboard Guided Tour, v2Springboard Guided Tour, v2
Springboard Guided Tour, v2
 
Essay About Nonprofit Organizations
Essay About Nonprofit OrganizationsEssay About Nonprofit Organizations
Essay About Nonprofit Organizations
 
The Importance Of Community Development
The Importance Of Community DevelopmentThe Importance Of Community Development
The Importance Of Community Development
 
Depression Scenarios
Depression ScenariosDepression Scenarios
Depression Scenarios
 
Death Of A Salesman Essay Conclusion
Death Of A Salesman Essay ConclusionDeath Of A Salesman Essay Conclusion
Death Of A Salesman Essay Conclusion
 
Official Izm Orientation Guide
Official Izm Orientation GuideOfficial Izm Orientation Guide
Official Izm Orientation Guide
 
Free Muet Essay Sample. Online assignment writing service.
Free Muet Essay Sample. Online assignment writing service.Free Muet Essay Sample. Online assignment writing service.
Free Muet Essay Sample. Online assignment writing service.
 
Successful Advocacy: A Values-Based Approach
Successful Advocacy: A Values-Based ApproachSuccessful Advocacy: A Values-Based Approach
Successful Advocacy: A Values-Based Approach
 

More from Norman DeLisle

Change frameworks text
Change frameworks textChange frameworks text
Change frameworks textNorman DeLisle
 
Assistive Technology and Neurodiversity
Assistive Technology and NeurodiversityAssistive Technology and Neurodiversity
Assistive Technology and NeurodiversityNorman DeLisle
 
Handout for assistive_technology_and_
Handout for assistive_technology_and_Handout for assistive_technology_and_
Handout for assistive_technology_and_Norman DeLisle
 
Social Networking: Some Basics
Social Networking: Some BasicsSocial Networking: Some Basics
Social Networking: Some BasicsNorman DeLisle
 

More from Norman DeLisle (8)

Change frameworks text
Change frameworks textChange frameworks text
Change frameworks text
 
Assistive Technology and Neurodiversity
Assistive Technology and NeurodiversityAssistive Technology and Neurodiversity
Assistive Technology and Neurodiversity
 
Handout for assistive_technology_and_
Handout for assistive_technology_and_Handout for assistive_technology_and_
Handout for assistive_technology_and_
 
Social Networking
Social NetworkingSocial Networking
Social Networking
 
Social Networking: Some Basics
Social Networking: Some BasicsSocial Networking: Some Basics
Social Networking: Some Basics
 
Human Centered Design
Human Centered DesignHuman Centered Design
Human Centered Design
 
Advocacy 201
Advocacy 201Advocacy 201
Advocacy 201
 
Advocacy 101
Advocacy 101Advocacy 101
Advocacy 101
 

Recently uploaded

We are inviting you on board, to move forward together in the Right Direction
We are inviting you on board, to move forward together in the Right DirectionWe are inviting you on board, to move forward together in the Right Direction
We are inviting you on board, to move forward together in the Right DirectionRight Direction Aero
 
Project Work on Consumer Behavior in Fast Food Restaurants. Their behavior to...
Project Work on Consumer Behavior in Fast Food Restaurants. Their behavior to...Project Work on Consumer Behavior in Fast Food Restaurants. Their behavior to...
Project Work on Consumer Behavior in Fast Food Restaurants. Their behavior to...BilalAhmed717
 
unfinished legacy it is a clothing brand
unfinished legacy it is a clothing brandunfinished legacy it is a clothing brand
unfinished legacy it is a clothing brandakashm530190
 
Optimize Your CRM Customization and Beyond
Optimize Your CRM Customization and BeyondOptimize Your CRM Customization and Beyond
Optimize Your CRM Customization and BeyondBoundify
 
NVIDIA's overall business overview Presentation.pptx
NVIDIA's overall business overview Presentation.pptxNVIDIA's overall business overview Presentation.pptx
NVIDIA's overall business overview Presentation.pptxKrutik Rakade
 
A Comprehensive Case Study on the IL&FS Crisis (final).pptx
A Comprehensive Case Study on the IL&FS Crisis (final).pptxA Comprehensive Case Study on the IL&FS Crisis (final).pptx
A Comprehensive Case Study on the IL&FS Crisis (final).pptxShainaMaheshwari1
 
Strategic Resources Corporate Presentation - March 2024 Update
Strategic Resources Corporate Presentation - March 2024 UpdateStrategic Resources Corporate Presentation - March 2024 Update
Strategic Resources Corporate Presentation - March 2024 UpdateAdnet Communications
 
CXO 2.0 Conference (Event Information Deck | Dec'24-Mar'25)
CXO 2.0 Conference (Event Information Deck | Dec'24-Mar'25)CXO 2.0 Conference (Event Information Deck | Dec'24-Mar'25)
CXO 2.0 Conference (Event Information Deck | Dec'24-Mar'25)CXO 2.0 Conference
 
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - FINAL REQUIREMENT.pdf
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - FINAL REQUIREMENT.pdfCORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - FINAL REQUIREMENT.pdf
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - FINAL REQUIREMENT.pdfLouis Malaybalay
 
A Case Study On SQUARE GROUP Bangladesh.pdf
A Case Study On SQUARE GROUP Bangladesh.pdfA Case Study On SQUARE GROUP Bangladesh.pdf
A Case Study On SQUARE GROUP Bangladesh.pdfmeftaul987
 
14 march 2024-capital-markets-update eni.pdf
14 march 2024-capital-markets-update eni.pdf14 march 2024-capital-markets-update eni.pdf
14 march 2024-capital-markets-update eni.pdfEni
 
pitchdeck ORPC 2019 data info turine.pdf
pitchdeck ORPC 2019 data info turine.pdfpitchdeck ORPC 2019 data info turine.pdf
pitchdeck ORPC 2019 data info turine.pdflebob12
 
Record of Module Forensic photography in
Record of Module Forensic photography inRecord of Module Forensic photography in
Record of Module Forensic photography inalexademileighpacal
 
Business Models and Business Model Innovation
Business Models and Business Model InnovationBusiness Models and Business Model Innovation
Business Models and Business Model InnovationMichal Hron
 
ICv2 Hobby Games White Paper 2024 - State of the Industry
ICv2 Hobby Games White Paper 2024 - State of the IndustryICv2 Hobby Games White Paper 2024 - State of the Industry
ICv2 Hobby Games White Paper 2024 - State of the IndustryDennisViau
 
Young Woman Entrepreneur - Kaviya Cherian
Young Woman Entrepreneur - Kaviya CherianYoung Woman Entrepreneur - Kaviya Cherian
Young Woman Entrepreneur - Kaviya CherianCDEEPANVITA
 
Bus Eth ch3 ppt.ppt business ethics and corporate social responsibilities ppt
Bus Eth ch3 ppt.ppt business ethics and corporate social responsibilities pptBus Eth ch3 ppt.ppt business ethics and corporate social responsibilities ppt
Bus Eth ch3 ppt.ppt business ethics and corporate social responsibilities pptendeworku
 
Olympus 38DL Plus Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge
Olympus 38DL Plus Ultrasonic Thickness GaugeOlympus 38DL Plus Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge
Olympus 38DL Plus Ultrasonic Thickness GaugeStephenKim86
 
PHX Corporate Presentation March 2024 Final
PHX Corporate Presentation March 2024 FinalPHX Corporate Presentation March 2024 Final
PHX Corporate Presentation March 2024 FinalPanhandleOilandGas
 

Recently uploaded (20)

We are inviting you on board, to move forward together in the Right Direction
We are inviting you on board, to move forward together in the Right DirectionWe are inviting you on board, to move forward together in the Right Direction
We are inviting you on board, to move forward together in the Right Direction
 
Project Work on Consumer Behavior in Fast Food Restaurants. Their behavior to...
Project Work on Consumer Behavior in Fast Food Restaurants. Their behavior to...Project Work on Consumer Behavior in Fast Food Restaurants. Their behavior to...
Project Work on Consumer Behavior in Fast Food Restaurants. Their behavior to...
 
unfinished legacy it is a clothing brand
unfinished legacy it is a clothing brandunfinished legacy it is a clothing brand
unfinished legacy it is a clothing brand
 
Optimize Your CRM Customization and Beyond
Optimize Your CRM Customization and BeyondOptimize Your CRM Customization and Beyond
Optimize Your CRM Customization and Beyond
 
NVIDIA's overall business overview Presentation.pptx
NVIDIA's overall business overview Presentation.pptxNVIDIA's overall business overview Presentation.pptx
NVIDIA's overall business overview Presentation.pptx
 
A Comprehensive Case Study on the IL&FS Crisis (final).pptx
A Comprehensive Case Study on the IL&FS Crisis (final).pptxA Comprehensive Case Study on the IL&FS Crisis (final).pptx
A Comprehensive Case Study on the IL&FS Crisis (final).pptx
 
Strategic Resources Corporate Presentation - March 2024 Update
Strategic Resources Corporate Presentation - March 2024 UpdateStrategic Resources Corporate Presentation - March 2024 Update
Strategic Resources Corporate Presentation - March 2024 Update
 
CXO 2.0 Conference (Event Information Deck | Dec'24-Mar'25)
CXO 2.0 Conference (Event Information Deck | Dec'24-Mar'25)CXO 2.0 Conference (Event Information Deck | Dec'24-Mar'25)
CXO 2.0 Conference (Event Information Deck | Dec'24-Mar'25)
 
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - FINAL REQUIREMENT.pdf
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - FINAL REQUIREMENT.pdfCORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - FINAL REQUIREMENT.pdf
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - FINAL REQUIREMENT.pdf
 
A Case Study On SQUARE GROUP Bangladesh.pdf
A Case Study On SQUARE GROUP Bangladesh.pdfA Case Study On SQUARE GROUP Bangladesh.pdf
A Case Study On SQUARE GROUP Bangladesh.pdf
 
14 march 2024-capital-markets-update eni.pdf
14 march 2024-capital-markets-update eni.pdf14 march 2024-capital-markets-update eni.pdf
14 march 2024-capital-markets-update eni.pdf
 
WAM Corporate Presentation Mar 12 2024.pdf
WAM Corporate Presentation Mar 12 2024.pdfWAM Corporate Presentation Mar 12 2024.pdf
WAM Corporate Presentation Mar 12 2024.pdf
 
pitchdeck ORPC 2019 data info turine.pdf
pitchdeck ORPC 2019 data info turine.pdfpitchdeck ORPC 2019 data info turine.pdf
pitchdeck ORPC 2019 data info turine.pdf
 
Record of Module Forensic photography in
Record of Module Forensic photography inRecord of Module Forensic photography in
Record of Module Forensic photography in
 
Business Models and Business Model Innovation
Business Models and Business Model InnovationBusiness Models and Business Model Innovation
Business Models and Business Model Innovation
 
ICv2 Hobby Games White Paper 2024 - State of the Industry
ICv2 Hobby Games White Paper 2024 - State of the IndustryICv2 Hobby Games White Paper 2024 - State of the Industry
ICv2 Hobby Games White Paper 2024 - State of the Industry
 
Young Woman Entrepreneur - Kaviya Cherian
Young Woman Entrepreneur - Kaviya CherianYoung Woman Entrepreneur - Kaviya Cherian
Young Woman Entrepreneur - Kaviya Cherian
 
Bus Eth ch3 ppt.ppt business ethics and corporate social responsibilities ppt
Bus Eth ch3 ppt.ppt business ethics and corporate social responsibilities pptBus Eth ch3 ppt.ppt business ethics and corporate social responsibilities ppt
Bus Eth ch3 ppt.ppt business ethics and corporate social responsibilities ppt
 
Olympus 38DL Plus Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge
Olympus 38DL Plus Ultrasonic Thickness GaugeOlympus 38DL Plus Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge
Olympus 38DL Plus Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge
 
PHX Corporate Presentation March 2024 Final
PHX Corporate Presentation March 2024 FinalPHX Corporate Presentation March 2024 Final
PHX Corporate Presentation March 2024 Final
 

Mission one, Mission two

  • 1. Mission One, Mission Two Why Our Peer and Consumer Organizations Get Off Track I’m Norm DeLisle and I’m the Executive Director of Michigan Disability Rights Coalition: Our Mission: “MDRC is a disability justice movement working to transform communities” Our Motto: “ With Liberty and Access for All” Our Attitude: “Feisty and Non-Compliant” I have been working in the disability community since late 1970, and I have a long history of depression, anxiety and PTSD symptoms. Right now, I am doing as well as I ever have in my life. I’m happy to have this chance to talk to you about a very important issue. You should feel free to take care of your needs when they arise, and ask questions when you think of them. Why is it so difficult to keep our consumer organizations on track? It is because we can’t serve just one master and still have a successful organization. And the fight between those two masters
  • 2. is demanding and stressful.
  • 3. Is Your Purpose Fading? Is it getting tougher to see where you are heading? We start off strong, full of passion and advocacy fervor. Over time, that passion fades as we come to grips with the reality of running an organization. Eventually, it seems as though we have lost our way, our purpose, and we are overwhelmed with paperwork, human resources problems, funder political issues, and sheer exhaustion. Why? The short answer is that organizations, just like people, forests, cars, and mountains, age. This presentation is the story of how organizations age, and what you can do to slow and redirect the aging process.
  • 4. How Organizations Age Organizations age (some would say, “mature”) because of the relationship between two obligations they must fulfill. Sometimes these two obligations support one another, and sometimes they conflict. The small everyday choices made about how these two obligations interact are the force that ages the organization. I call them Mission One and Mission Two. Mission One is the purpose of the organization, the original reason why it was created. Mission Two is the sustaining of the organization; basically, all the ways the organization maintains, repairs, and grows itself.
  • 5. Mission One Mission One is the purpose for which the group or organization was created. Mission One reflects the valued outcomes for your staff and members, the people who benefit from your existence. Mission One motivates board and staff members, or participants/members because the valued outcomes of Mission One are so powerful, especially in social justice groups. Mission One (not the PR version of mission one) always contains elements that can be expressed in moving and meaningful stories by your constituents.
  • 6. Mission Two Mission Two is the continuation or expansion of the group or organization. Continuation is so ordinary an aspect of group or organization work that it is readily confused with Mission One. But, Mission Two is not Mission One, and can either support or destroy Mission One. This tension between Mission One and Mission Two is what drives the aging of the group or organization. Sustaining your organization is not just about money. It is about paperwork, reports, performance appraisals, maintenance, repair, skills, capacities, experience, commitment, morale, policies, hiring and firing, and the rest of what we take to be the ordinary day to day tasks of any group or organization. All of these can be thought about and implemented without reference to Mission One. While we often believe (correctly) that Mission Two is necessary for the survival of Mission One, it is also and always true that every minute, every dime, every anxiety spent on Mission Two is taken
  • 7. directly away from Mission One. An obvious example is the organizational provision of funding reserves. Reserves are funds that are deliberately not used for Mission One in order to secure the ongoing survival of the organization or group in the face of future funding uncertainty. The time spent building these reserves, planning for their stability and growth, and their exclusion from consideration for use to provide or reach Mission One are all examples of how Mission Two detracts from the achievement of Mission One.
  • 8. A "Concrete" Example Creating and Maintaining the American Freeway System: ● ● ● ● ● ● I grew up in Midland, Michigan, but the rest of my family lived in Detroit Pre-Freeway, the trip to visit Detroit was 4 hours on two lane roads traveling through many little towns When the freeway was finished, the first trip was one hour and 15 minutes Then repairs and maintenance started, and traffic use increased Now, if there is no gridlock, the trip is 2 and a half hours And its getting worse as more maintenance is required The purpose of the freeway is becoming (more and more) an object for repair and maintenance and the money that can be made by doing that, and (less and less) a tool for rapid comfortable transportation.
  • 9. Some More Examples ● New Humans: Brand new humans are full of possibilities, but as we age, we spend more time maintaining ourselves and less time learning and exploring possibilities ● Government: Programs start out with one purpose and gradually add rules and additional purposes, until they sometimes end up doing the exact opposite of what they started out to do. ● Large Corporations: When businesses start, they typically have one outcome-a product or a service. As they get bigger, they may go public and suddenly have shareholders who don’t care about the product, only how much money they are making. Often, the largest enterprises are only about money, and we find financial services corporations betting against their own customers in order to make money for individual brokers and managers.
  • 10. Seeing the Tension In our ordinary work lives, it can be hard to see the tension between Mission 1 and Mission 2. Generally, there needs to be a crisis before that tension is revealed. The crisis can be large, but doesn’t need to be. A crisis doesn’t guarantee that we will see the tension between Mission 1 and Mission 2. We tend to meld the two missions together and see the crisis as one for the organization, not one for the conflict between Mission 1 and Mission 2. We try to solve the crisis without any deep consideration of the impact it is having on our version of Mission 1 and Mission 2. I am going to give some examples of crises that point to the tension between Mission 1 and Mission 2.
  • 11. Organizational Crises In the very early life of a new organization or group, it is often possible to focus only on Mission One-at least for a time. But eventually, issues related to how the group or organization will continue arise and begin to dominate the attention of stakeholders: ● Financial Crises ○ Financial Controls ○ Low Level Embezzlement ○ Employee Equity ○ Fundraising flaws ● Governance Crises ○ Board membership stability ○ Board focus on micromanagement ○ Autocratic founders ○ General Political/Social conflicts ● Resource Crises (funds, skills, work demands) ○ Example: A Crisis of Capacity for Mission One ■ MPAS individual advocacy model: I worked at Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service for 13 years. In the first few years, I was an advocate for
  • 12. ■ ■ individuals in a 6 county area in the Thumb. About half of my work was representing families and students in conflicts over special education services. At first, because we advocates knew the law and regulations regarding school education obligations, it was very easy to win these conflicts. In addition, because we quickly became good at winning, it was always easier to just solve the student’s issue by ourselves rather than involving the family in deep learning about how to advocate for themselves. This produced two consequences. One was that the school district’s gradually got better at understanding special education rules, and they hired attorneys on retainer to handle conflicts that came up. They were smarter about the issues over which they fought with us, and the issues themselves became much more complex, requiring more of our time. The second problem was that once we helped a family, we could expect them to tell their friends and show up the next year expecting us to advocate for their son or daughter again. This led inevitably to an inability on our part to respond to the advocacy demands, though it took several years to reach this point. This problem of advocacy strategy (Mission 1) and resources (Mission 2) caused a strategic crisis. How could MPAS handle this overload? ● Simply increasing funding might slow the emergence of the crisis, but wouldn’t change it fundamentally. MDOE estimated that 10% of education planning meetings were contentious and would require an advocate to sort them out, a total of roughly 20,000 a year, requiring roughly 200 full time advocates who did nothing but special
  • 13. ● ○ education advocacy. This was and is out of the question. ● Changing the culture of the education system was an option, but hasn’t moved much off the dime in the last quarter century. It would require the commitment of the organization to a new Mission 1 that would take decades. However useful such an outcome would be, the time and funding required were unrealistic over that long term. ● We could shift to a community organizing model in which each advocate would operate as an organizer with families in their geographic area to create local advocates and serve as a support system and a facilitator of skill development for that region. ● We could keep the basic mission and change the model to target priority cases for advocacy and use an I&R model for the rest. ■ MPAS chose the last of these because it preserved the special legal skills accumulated over the previous decade. Personally, I would have chosen the community organizing model, but, then, I’m not an attorney who had committed their career to disability law, nor someone who had worked for decades to create accessible legal services for people with disabilities. ■ But this strategic choice dictated the future of MPAS-how it supports and continues its activities, how it judges the issues that its customers bring to it, how it allocates all of its resources. ■ So, this one crisis required a complete reformulation of organization’s strategy. Reaching a limit in a critical resource is a very common
  • 14. ○ problem (a Mission 2 problem) that requires a reformulation of Mission 1. If you haven’t run into your version of this yet, you will, if you are successful.
  • 15. So What Can We Do? Oh No!!! Here is what we can’t do: ● ● Drop either Mission 1 or Mission 2 Come up with an artificial balance between Mission 1 and Mission 2 (maybe mission 1 days and mission 2 days) ● Create Rules to Ensure Our Commitment to Mission 1 (noting mission focused activities on our time sheets and reporting the amounts to the Board) . These are all Mission 2 ways of dealing with the problems of Mission 1 capacity issues. They will undermine Mission 1, even though they might well support continuation of the organization.
  • 16. So, Really, What Can We Do? Some Places to Start: ● ● ● ● ● ● Create Separate Mission Statements for Mission 1 and Mission 2 Board members perform Mission 1 critical activities Managers perform Mission 1 critical activities Mission 2 staff perform Mission 1 critical activities Undermine creeping Mission 2ism Mission 1 Advocacy when making Mission 2 policy changes
  • 17. Mission Statements A common pattern for mission statements in nonprofit organizations is that they become more general and less meaningful over time, as the focus of the organization shifts from their original purpose to marketing the organization to stakeholders and funders who do not necessarily “get” the original purpose. Think, “Our organization will become the best (definition of services) provider in this (region, state, national, global, or cosmic) area”. I am not implying that we shouldn’t try to make our mission understandable to people who aren’t deeply involved in our community, and who don’t understand our code words and jargon. What I’m really saying is that purpose (Mission 1) and marketing (Mission 2) are different worlds. I’m suggesting that organizations have two mission statements: ● One for deep purpose ● One for communicating your work to the truly outside world
  • 18. Making use of a concept like this would require you to decide whether a message or communication is for Mission 1 or a MIssion 2, and then use the appropriate statement. It also requires you to create two mission statements, and we all know how frustrating it is to create one. On the other hand, going through the process of making two mission statements allows those who participate to clearly see the difference between Mission 1 and 2, and incorporates that difference into their thinking about what work they do and why they do it. This is equally true for board members as well as staff-even for volunteers if you include them in your mission statement development work.
  • 19. Board and Mission 1 The Big Picture Boards are often overwhelmed by their Mission 2 responsibilities, and have a very abstract notion of what Mission 1 is for the organization they govern. Over time, Mission 2 displaces their focus on Mission 1, making it distant and largely irrelevant to the immediate demands of funding and human resources issues. Finding effective and enjoyable ways for board members to participate in truly Mission 1 activities is difficult. But it is the only effective way I have seen to sharpen the difference in the minds of board members about the real distinctions between Mission 1 and Mission 2. Note that lived experience, while helpful in maintaining the distinction between Mission 1 and Mission 2, is no guarantee over the long term. Constant and unremitting exposure to the demands and crises of Mission 2 will whittle awareness of Mission 1 down to nothing over a few years. As Kurt Vonnegut said of his novel, Mother Night, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
  • 20. Managers and Mission 1 Making Sausage Managers, regardless of their background or commitment to Mission 1, have their work lives gradually taken over by Mission 2. Managerial work is a lot like making sausage-attempting to make the best tasting concoction you can out of largely unpalatable components-and the “vision thing” is often degraded into trying to avoid various kinds of Mission 2 disasters. This kind of managerial reality has a corrosive effect on commitment to Mission 1. A manager’s day consists of interruptions and crises from above and below. Managers become cynical about the possibilities of genuine change, and feel caught in an economic trap by the need for a job that pays as well as the one they have. Managers also need to perform Mission 1 critical activities. They must actually help a constituent of the organization achieve a valued outcome. They must keep the link they once had with the day to day lives of those they serve. This link to the lived experience of a person is the distinction between empty activities that look like Mission 1 outcomes and real Mission 1 outcomes.
  • 21. Mission 2 Staff and Mission 1 In all but the smallest organizations, some staff focus exclusively on Mission 2 outcomes. A typical example would be staff who focus on financial and accounting tasks. You want these staff to be honest and direct about the impact of decisions on the organization’ s finances. You certainly don’t want to discourage them from reporting problems. At the same time, senior managers need to make decisions about Mission 2 problems with Mission 1 in mind. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you would choose Mission 1 over Mission 2 in a financial crisis. More likely it means that you have to work harder to come up with a solution that doesn’t undermine either Mission. In addition to this basic managerial strategy, you need to find a way to help Mission 2 staff understand your Mission 1 less abstractly. A way to do this is to have occasional opportunities for Mission 2 staff to “shadow” Mission 1 staff in their direct work with the constituents who are invested in your Mission 1 outcomes. The contact with lived experience of those who benefit from your Mission 1 will
  • 22. deepen staff understanding of why you do what you do. It is also possible (and has been done in Michigan’s CMH system) for Mission 2 staff to build communication materials that tell constituents what the financial rules that impact constituent lives actually mean. The process of struggling to make financial concepts and rules, easily understood by financial staff, equally understandable to persons with no financial background, will go a long way to building a better understanding of Mission 1.
  • 23. Creeping Mission 2ism This house is no longer a home. For this house, Mission 2 has replaced Mission 1, at least until it is rebuilt. As our earlier discussion shows, the replacement of Mission 1 by Mission 2 is not really a single choice. It is many, many choices generally made over a long period of time, and resulting in Mission 2 gradually becoming the most important, maybe even the only, valued thing that the organization does. An example of a common choice point occurs when a staff person pursues a valued Mission 1 outcome, but undermines a valued Mission 2 outcome (maybe by spending money not allocated to a specific budget line).The common response of managers is to punish the failed Mission 2 outcome, giving the clear message that Mission 2 is more important than Mission 1. Other examples would include the use of a policy to deny or
  • 24. exclude a Mission 1 outcome; refusing to advocate for a Mission 1 outcome because of the political consequences; fudging your Mission 1 values to a funder either to obtain or keep funding. Note that these actions are not necessarily bad or even avoidable. Rather, they are sacrificing Mission 1 to continue the organization (Mission 2). Mission 2ism arises because we have to make many many Mission 2 decisions or choices for every Mission 1 decision or choice we make.
  • 25. Advocating for Mission 1 Diogenes and His Dog Looking for an Honest Man A person with a good understanding of your Mission 1 can be given the responsibility of advocating for Mission 1 values when Mission 2 decisions are made, a sort of devil’s advocate. This responsibility will anger people who are trying to produce valued outcomes for Mission 2, and the devil’s advocate will need protection and a clear organization wide understanding of the purpose of their advocacy. Any final decision on any issue is the responsibility of senior managers, but those decisions are supposed to be informed, not arbitrary, and making sure that the implications for Mission 1 are public and transparent is an organizational obligation.
  • 26. More Ideas No magic formulas here-just some ideas to provoke your thinking: ● Automate every aspect of Mission 2 outcomes you can, so that staff don’t have to think about them or develop anxiety about them. Anxiety makes any triggering event more important than it really is. Technology has great possibilities for supporting this process. ● Make Mission 1 outcomes a standard part of the discussions in every staff meeting, and put them earlier on the meeting agenda ● Give higher point values to Mission 1 outcomes in performance evaluations and put them earlier in the evaluation than Mission 2 outcomes. Better yet, get rid of performance reviews, which are always biased toward Mission 2 ● Avoid creating personnel policies for low incidence behaviors. Use progressive discipline instead ● Produce HR policies through full staff consensus as much as humanly possible
  • 27. ● ● Use “nudges” instead of policies for HR compliance issues “Efficiency” is a Mission 2 value, and it is only useful when applied to an outcome where you can predict the future. So, many of your financial outcomes can be viewed through the lens of efficiency. This won’t work for many of your Mission 1 outcomes, like, say, self-determination plans. Forcing efficiency in outcomes that are marked by the uncertainty of life will destroy the purpose of such outcomes.
  • 28. Resources Copper Mining in the UP Online Versions of the Slide Presentation: Slideshare (PDF): http://www.slideshare.net/ndelisle/mission-onemission-two-25775965 Organizational Resources: SAMHSA (value-driven resources): http://www.samhsa.gov/ World Institute on Disability (value-driven resources): http://wid. org/resources Mind Tools (general resources): http://www.mindtools.com/index. html Strategic Vision (general): http://goo.gl/bnfODF Idealist (a combination of general and value-driven): http://goo. gl/DKTcBT Nudges Resources: Rethinking Behavior: Change, Nudge-style: http://goo.gl/jkg4t3 Nudge blog: http://goo.gl/qWo30E Progressive Discipline: What is Progressive Discipline?: http://goo.gl/Rx6Gr7 Performance Evaluation: 10 Reasons to Get Rid of Performance Reviews: http://goo.
  • 30. Your Presenter I am Norm DeLisle, Executive Director of Michigan Disability Rights Coalition: Short Bio: hubby2jill, 2dogs, advocatefor40+yrs, change strategist, trainer, geezer, pa2Loree, gndpa2Nevin Email: ndelisle@mymdrc.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/mdrcngd Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/disability.norm Blogs: Recovery Michigan: http://recoverymi.posthaven.com/ Intentional Change: http://changeintent.posthaven.com/ Disability Futures: http://normdelisle.posthaven.com/ Health and Disability: http://ltcreform.posthaven.com/ Economic Justice: http://economic-justice.posthaven.com/
  • 31. Evaluations Don’t forget to fill out the evaluation form!
  • 32. Last Thoughts Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due. --Marcus Tullius Cicero Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. --John F. Kennedy Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. --Helen Keller The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. --Rainer Maria Rilke Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time. --Bruce Springsteen Hold to the Mission 1 that means the most to you.
  • 33. Thanks for Participating I Appreciate Your Interest!
  • 34. Further Along The Road... The slides that follow will show you information that goes beyond the presentation but will expand your understanding if you want to review it. The focus of the following slides is on the more general problem of having two purposes that sometimes support and sometimes conflict with each other. A visual guide to this notion is to connect the two complements with a ~, as in Mission 1 ~ Mission 2. The tilde indicates that the two purposes sometimes support and sometimes conflict.
  • 35. Mission 1 ~ Mission 2 It is obvious that sometimes Mission 1 and 2 support each other and sometimes they interfere with each other. How should we understand their relationship? After all, I hope I have made it clear that you can’t simply ignore one or the other and have a viable organization. Pure Mission 1=Explosion, which dies out quickly Pure Mission 2=Zombie, with no meaningful purpose (except of course, eating brains!!) The real issue is how to manage the coordination of these complements in our day to day organizational lives. Some of the ways that have been tried in the past to understand relationships between partly incompatible processes like these include: ● ● One is good and one is bad One is more important than the other
  • 36. ● Both are important at different times in some cycle or process Any of these are true sometimes, so picking one isn’t very helpful as a guide. You’ll end up being wrong too often. We want an understanding that is more like the yin-yang model, but less abstract. Most of us don’t have the time or desire to sit in a cave for 20 years meditating on the philosophical possibilities of Taoism to discover lessons for daily life. We need a model that is more concrete.
  • 37. The Adapative Cycle A model of greater usefulness in looking at the relationship between Mission 1 and Mission 2 was created for understanding how forests and other ecosystems age and renew. It is called the Adaptive Cycle. It is a biological model of how Mission 1 and Mission 2 interact over the life of an ecosystem=organization in a cycle of four phases: 1. 2. 3. Reorganization/Renewal: When purpose is the only driving force (Mission 1), we try whatever seems possible, up to the point where we run into resource scarcity. Growth/Exploitation: We find we must develop a strategy for growth or maintenance (Mission 2), and we begin to view our resources as assets that must be nurtured, cultivated, harvested, and exploited. Conservation: As we bump into the ultimate limits on our growth, including our capacities, our markets, and our competition, we begin to view resources (funding, capabilities, experience) as long term assets that must be protected, defended, and, often, hidden from scrutiny.
  • 38. 1. Release: As conservation continues, and we focus more and more on Mission 2, we become organizationally brittle, lose our sense of our original purpose, and our assets and advantages begin to break down and drift away. Our context becomes ripe for new purposes and less hidebound beliefs, often done well outside our current organization. Our ecosystems have a built-in way to remove the no longer useful. Those biological organisms are simply eliminated, the ecosystem itself is simplified, and there remains an environment in which new organisms can make better use of old resources. Unfortunately, it is entirely possibly for human organizations to genuinely turn into zombies without this process of release and renewal occurring. We can individually and organizationally pretend that we are useful.
  • 39. Advocacy ~ Engagement Another example of how complicated purpose complements can be is Advocacy~Engagement. Adversarial relationships often create collaboration and engagement. Remember that “War makes for strange bedfellows”. Traditional advocacy is a purely adversarial process in which we defend a position, as in a court battle over legal and substantive outcomes. But even there, some level of cooperation is required to hold the adversarial contest in a court. I noticed in my time as an advocate at MPAS, that we often used a strategy I called “bounded collaboration”. Basically, we would cooperate until some line was crossed. At that point we became adversaries. More recently, I have found that simply taking a position as an advocate has become less and less fruitful over the years, and that engagement of the other parties in the stakeholder environment is necessary to move advocacy along. Most policy implementation problems these days, especially in health and supports, are very complex and contain structural problems that must be resolved
  • 40. before positional advocacy can work at all.
  • 41. Public Housing Another Example of a Complement: The complement I’ll look at here is Segregated Housing ~ Distributed Housing. Our value of Inclusion says that people with disabilities should have affordable and accessible housing in the same communities as everyone else. At the same time, the stigma of disability can make real inclusion difficult. And the history of trauma can make acquiring and using the social skills necessary to actually include yourself in one of those regular communities difficult. Two models of creating affordable and accessible housing have developed (with many variations): ● Segregated Housing: All housing units are part of a single building project with a focus on a single community (say, vets, seniors, poor, adults with disabilities), with supports provided in the building by a single provider
  • 42. ● Distributed Housing: Each unit is developed and built in the larger community. Supports are provided to the individual or family in that individual unit by a provider hired by the individual or family. There are specific economic and control reasons why The System has wanted to create and maintain segregated models of housing: ● ● ● ● In the creation of plans for housing projects, it is much easier to propose a single site, with infrastructure, design of individual units, tax credit use, and the scaling of supports through a single provider contract There are economies of scale with a single site for maintenance and repair of individual units and the project as a whole. It is much easier to hide and manage unethical use of project funds in a single site It is also easier to enforce control over tenants and sanction them for violations, both of formal and informal rules, making it easier to serve the interests of the managers at the expense of the tenants. Scapegoating and bullying individual tenants into conformity is much more effective when you tie supports and loss of lease together. Failure to conform results in loss of housing, a powerful weapon. There are also social/emotional reasons that perpetuate segregated housing and segregated community models: ● ● Especially in the early phases of recovery, most people prefer to spend their social time with persons who are experiencing struggles similar to their own. The first issue in recovery is usually feeling safe. The preservation of the feeling of safety, basically relief from pain whether physical or social, becomes self-perpetuating in the same way that any relief from any pain does. Not ever leaving one’s comfort zone becomes a permanent way of living.
  • 43. ● ● One accepts the abusive control that project managers exert as the price for feeling safe. One’s life becomes permanently constrained So, segregated housing supports segregated communities, and vice versa. One way (one of a huge number of variations) of “complementing” these two models would be to always separate supports from residence, so that individual tenants can’t lose tenancy for choosing a different provider of supports. Another would be to put limits on the length of time a person can remain in segregated projects. A third would be to make transition from segregated to distributed housing a standard part of planning supports and skill building from the first day of tenancy in a segregated project. All of these would alter the dynamic of the Segregated Housing ~ Distributed Housing complement.
  • 44. Other Complements Some More Examples of Complements Important in Our Lives: Health Care ~ Health Costs Support ~ Personal Autonomy Learning ~ Choices Relationships ~ Personal Boundaries Structure ~ Process If you are really interested in this idea of complements, there is no better resource than The Natural Complement by Scott Kelso. You can find it at http://goo.gl/5l8sq2