Cultivating culture, Part 2: Developing a personal mission statement

Last week I wrote about whether your business/team have a strong culture and whether its in line with what you envisioned.

I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark that for many, it wasn’t quite peaches and cream.

The next step is interesting. Don't put it in the too-hard-basket.

You are what is going to drive your culture.

Not in the sense that you are going to oversee that your team are in line with your dream culture, but that you are going to have to live by example. Every day. And in order to do that, you need to be authentic. One thing leads to another, trust me, and when you start being ‘true to yourself’ (such a crappy American phrase but let’s roll with it), you start leading those who work with you.

Slowly you and your team will attract the clients that suit you best. Similarly, you will suit the clients best, and so it will be a beautiful, self-fulfilling relationship filled with rose petals and rainbows. Vom. But you get the picture.

In order to get to know yourself a little better, put the kettle on, find a large blank sheet of paper and sketch out some answers to the following.

- What have you done this week to make yourself stand out? How are you different?
- What can you unashamedly brag about?
- What are you most proud of?
- What would you defend? (This always makes me think of being in a lion pit)
- If you were given a million dollars today, and you had to donate it to an issue or cause, what would that cause be?
- What is the legacy you want to leave? Ouch, I know.
- What do people say you’re good at? Even if you’ve always thought it’s irrelevant to where you are at.
- What do you want more of? Less of?

OK YOU LOT. If you have just scanned through that list and thought, yeah, I’ve read all that before, nothing new, nothing life changing, then LISTEN UP: That just means you haven’t put enough time into answering those questions before. If they don’t get your juices going, then you haven’t thought about them hard enough. YOU HEAR ME? Now go back, read them again, get some pens and paper and try again.

A few recommendations:

1. Get other people’s input. Your mum in particular will be particularly insightful, even if it’s not quite whatchawanna hear. Sometimes the stuff we are best at is so natural to us that we don’t think of it ourselves. Irritatingly ironic.

2. Include what you see as negatives. Your strengths aren’t necessarily traditional ‘strengths’. I didn’t include ‘being incurably nosey’ on my list of strengths at first but when I did, I saw it in a whole new light.

3. Spend time on this. Ask yourself these questions in the car, before you go to bed, when you’re boiling the kettle. It takes a full week at least to ruminate on this stuff. It took me at least that to remember that I am emotional and it needed to be included in my list.