What's Your Mission?

| February 25, 2010 8:00 PM

Owen McClain, PGA Professional

What's Your Mission?

Most of us have goals. Or what we think of as goals. On my webpage (www.owenmcclaingolf.com) you’ll find a piece entitled, “Making Goal Setting Effective”. Without a structured plan for achieving goals, they are only dreams.

In golf, business, financial planning, or for issues in one’s personal life, it helps to have a strategic plan if you want to succeed. That encompasses four primary elements: Mission, Goals, Objectives, and the current situation. Your mission is what you ultimately aspire to achieve in very broad terms. Goals are your intermediate steps you seek to achieve in order to get there, and your objectives are the specific tasks identified which one commits to in order to fulfill those goals. The expression, “You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you are” defines the importance of knowing your current situation, which affects all other aspects of the equation.

The piece on my website puts this all together for a golf improvement plan. Here, I’d like to share some thoughts specific to mission statements.

It is surprising that so few businesses publish a formal mission statement, given the benefits of creating such a simple document. Businesses, as well as people, who do not know what their purpose is are constantly operating by crisis rather than by intentional managing. So, let’s define “mission statement”.

“A mission statement is a brief description of a company's fundamental purpose. A mission statement answers the question, "Why do we exist?" The mission statement articulates the company's purpose both for those in the organization and for the public.” Source: About.com

A mission statement should address five things: The company and product; the level of service; the customer; profitability; and the community. It’s not just about you; it informs everyone, from employee to customer, of the purpose for being in business. All initiatives and behaviors should be measured against that mission statement: if they don’t fit, either change them or change the mission statement.

Back to golf.

Without knowing “why” you play golf—most have never really thought about it, beyond “it’s fun!”—it is almost impossible to develop any sort of improvement plan you’ll be happy with. Without defining what “profit” you expect to attain from your practice, how do you know when you’ll be happy? How can your instructor prioritize which areas of your game to work on if your resources are limited? And without considering the impact of your game on everyone around you—you may be inviting unintended consequences in your relationships with others. Everyone says they’d like to play par golf, but what does a realistic improvement plan look like if you’re working 60 hours/week and single parenting? What does it look like if your mission is to compete at a world class level, versus playing to fulfill social needs at a skill level capable of qualifying for the first flight of your club championship? It isn’t just a matter of intensity, it’s a matter of approach. So obviously, we have much to consider in order to arrive at a realistic mission statement, but goals and objectives will neither be attainable or relevant if we haven’t got one.

Do you know your golf mission statement? If you’d like to play better golf, coming up with a mission statement is well worth your trouble. Be realistic, knowing that as your game improves, you can always adopt a new mission statement. Take into account the role your golf has in the lives of others, as well as “profitability”—what you expect to receive from your efforts. Armed with a mission statement, with the help of your golf professional an improvement plan containing appropriate goals and objectives can be adopted which is 99 percent certain to succeed.