We are on a Mission...

This is an extract from the article “We are on a Mission” by Ned Howey. For the full article, check out the full blog post here: https://www.tectonica.co/tectonica-mission-process 

We’ve talked about making decisions based on ‘our mission’ as a company for ages. Certainly, we’ve always approached our business at Tectonica as having a greater mission of making positive change in the world. We talked around the mission, doing things for the mission, and even about the mission.  

And yet, somehow at the agency, we’ve muddled through seemingly knowing in our hearts what we are here to do, without ever really taking the time to put pen to paper and wordsmithing the exact purpose of our work. We knew from the process of writing down our company values a couple of years ago - and from the almost ubiquitous role of missions in organisations we work with - having a mission can deeply serve us in many ways. After months of work, we finally have a written mission to share with the world and guide our team. And here we have it: 

Our mission is to create a seismic shift in the way politics are done, through innovations that empower social, economic and environmental justice movements.

As with all things, it seems so easy in retrospect. Now that we have it, it appears glaringly obvious to us and everyone we share it with (perhaps a sign we did something right). The process, however, was anything but. And what we’ve learned from this rather laborious experience, is that, in fact, the struggle in the process of its creation there was also great value. 

The Process 

The process with which we do our work is both as important as and heavily influences the success of the work itself. As was also the case for the development of the mission itself. 

We thought we weren’t going to arrive on the other side with a finalised mission. While we tasked our leadership with the job of its actual development (smaller groups are easier for creating a cohesive result), we agreed at the outset that we would do so only with deep consultation, input, revision, and guidance from our team. And perhaps most importantly, only sign off on a finalised mission when there was consensus across the entire staff team. 

We committed our weekly staff meetings to its discussion in a process that ended up lasting some months. At times it felt like we were entirely lost. One stuck word became a discussion for almost an entire meeting. Another meeting started with half the team agreeing to one idea with the other disagreeing, only to end with an almost 100% flip in who supported what. Would we ever settle on a mission? 

Being so many years into the work and already operating with an unspoken idea of the value of our work actually makes it much harder. We were tasked with describing something huge that was already there as a core part of our company identity and had little room to stray from the unwritten ideas we already held. Putting words to it is an act of communal creation - itself a kind of art. 

This work can seem hard and sometimes feel like wasted hours when everyone has so much to get done. But the process of conflict, disagreement, generation of ideas, excitement, feeling lost at times - all of it - is actually the work itself of creating a valuable mission that serves its true role as a lynchpin to the company, organisation or political party. Not only is the investment about developing a mission that truly reflects the core of operations itself, but the process of having the entire team deeply understand and have buy-in with the mission - in a way that influences how they see and conduct their work. It's hard because it is important.  That said, “Changing the world takes hard work, not tricks” is one of our core values at Tectonica. 

As these things do, when consensus is actually honoured in the process, a final draft was followed by the rare silence of no objections in our last meeting on the topic. We might have all been wondering, “Is this finally it?”. We made the rounds to see if each team member was on board, and we finally - after 9 years of operation - had a mission for our company. We ran the draft by key stakeholders in the community to ensure it also matched how our external world viewed its accuracy: 

“Nailed it.”

“You’ve landed in the right place.” 

“Perfect.” 

What We Learned in the Process of Defining Our Mission

Missions Aren’t Easy - And Especially Not Ours

While all missions are undoubtedly complex, we definitely got ‘bogged down’ with some particular elements that are complex in our specific work. Namely, we struggled a lot with the role we have as related to our clients and their objectives. While ultimately the achievement of progressive work around the world is what drives us, we were clear that we generally take a supporting role in relationship to our client’s missions. As we often say, we are kind of like the “Fab 5 for Digital Organising” - bringing in a set of specialisations but always to help uncover the power that already lies in the communities we work with. 

Without a doubt, the core of our work is about eventually achieving a world that is more open, democratic, fair, tolerant, progressive and just, and we only take clients we view in line with this. 

Also, the work that we do is about the achievement of a more progressive world. Still, for us, it's more than just that - it's also about innovating the way organisations and political parties do politics - the way they build power, not just the power they build. We struggled greatly in developing our mission to balance these two elements: the outcome of our client’s work and the role we have in influencing the way groups do the work. 

From our experience, creating a mission that goes beyond marketing materials and strikes to the core of what brings you to work, when done right, is not always an easy process. It is, however, a worthwhile investment of time not only for the value that having a relevant mission serves but for the impact of conducting the process itself.