How to do Management

Have you ever come across a "Mission Statement" lately? Loads of organisations have them. Some because they need to focus on what they have to do but a lot more have them because the last management consultant told them they needed one. It's a bit like the latin motto which used to adorn the cap badge heraldry, "Per Ardua Ad Astra" sot of thing. That particular motto belongs to the Royal Air Force and means "Through Struggles to the Stars" which is more in tune with the sentiments of NASA than the blue-clad mud movers.

I may be marketing a mission statement parsing tool shortly. It asks the question "What? Where? Why? How? Who? and When?" of mission statements. The responses must be framed several different ways because the question may be asked in several different contexts: Conceptual, Contextual, Logical, Physical, Mechanical and Instantial. I.e. the Zachman diagram is used to decompose the mission statement. (I'm a big fan of the Zachman diagram)

The responses occupy thirty-six cells of a matrix with these column and row headings. The number of answers that can be given is a metric of the effectiveness of the mission statement in providing strategic, tactical and operational guidance to the enterprise. The number of blank cells, the number of unanswered questions, prompts the enterprise to ask the questions that need to be asked before the mission can begin, the How, Why and When sort of questions that are essential to planning.

I tried this once with a corporate mission statement that appeared to be well thought-out, expressive and inspirational. The questions raised by my analysis were a little disturbing since implicit in the mission statement is that you have some sort of monitoring process to let you know when the mission is (a) on track and (b) completed. (As the RAF might say, how many stars have we reached? How many more have we left to do?). It turns out that most mission statements have no sort of end-condition that can be defined or reached and are purely aspirational.

"Empowering stakeholders" is a common theme in mission statements these days. I just googled for the expression and scored over a million hits. If you have this in your mission statement how indeed do you know when you have been successful or even if you are on the right track? What metrics can you employ to measure empowerment. The common get-out is to launch a survey asking your stakeholder "Do you strongly agree, agree, disgree or strongly disagree with the statement 'I feel empowered." I am not sure that this sort of metric really measures anything compared to something more solid like the number of complaints received.

I was brought up in the disciplines of engineering. I was taught that you cannot manage or control anything that you cannot first measure. I regard this as an axiom, a self-explanatory and indisputably true statement. The appliance of science to the measurement of management still has a long, long way to go. Sadly when I raise these points, I am accused of 'getting too technical' which tells me my peers and colleagues lack the stomach for a rigorous debate.