Mission is crucial to every organization. Both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations use mission statements to drive their organization and their people.
Here are some great examples of mission statements from organizations you will recognize.
To inspire hope and contribute to health and well-being by
providing the best care to every patient through integrated
clinical practice, education, and research. -Mayo Clinic
To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. -Tesla
Together, we create life-changing wishes for children
with critical illnesses. -Make a Wish America
Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. -Nike
Spread ideas. -TED
Some companies spend thousands of dollars to have their mission statement created, but then do little with it aside from some putting some words on a wall or crafting public relations and marketing campaigns. Others invest time and resources to integrate their mission into every area of their company, but struggle to expand their mission beyond the four walls of the C-suite. What many organizations fail to realize is that in order to stay on mission and expand the impact of their mission, they’ll need to put learning into the center of what they do.
Every one of the mission statements listed above require education. Whether it’s a non-profit who is educating potential donors, or a for-profit educating their customers about why they should buy from them, learning is paramount to the success of their mission. In order to be successful at fulfilling and expanding your mission, you’ll need both internal and external learning and how you create that learning will make all of the difference. Here are a few tips for creating learning that makes your mission possible.
Tips for Learning that Expands your Mission
- Understand how Learning Impacts your Mission.
We believe that all of the world’s problems can be solved through education. The same is true for your organization’s problems or the problems your organization is trying to solve with your mission.
- Create Learning that Sticks
Remember the cartoon Charlie Brown? Whenever the teacher talked in the cartoon episodes, it was a garbled incoherent voice. That’s what it sounds like when poor learning content lands on the ears of those you are trying to teach. At E5I we are passionate about creating learning that sticks vs. learning that sucks. We have a whole article on how to do that here. (Here’s a clip of the Charlie Brown cartoon in case you’ve never heard it before.)
- Design your Learning
Intentional learning design is the process of understanding the learning objectives, creating learning content that meets those objectives and delivering an engaging learning experience. You might be tempted to skip this step and get right to educating. Don’t! Without the proper educational design all of your efforts (and money) will be wasted.
- Combine On-Demand and In-Community Learning
Yes, e-learning is here to stay! On-demand learning is convenient and easy for most to access. This should be a part of your learning design regardless of what learning you want to institute for your mission expansion and who you are educating. But on-demand learning alone isn’t as effective as a combination of on-demand learning and in-community (or social) learning. Humans are social creatures, and we retain what we learn with and from others more than just learning on our own while at home in our jammies. Whether it’s a virtual classroom, or a half-day workshop, or a “hands-on” experience, make sure you add social learning to your design.
Examples of Mission Expanding Learning
To give you an idea of how this works in real life, here are a few examples of how some of our clients have used learning to expand their mission.
Ambassadors for Business is a non-profit with a mission to provide ‘community and resources to help Christians in the marketplace connect their faith and work.’ Ambassadors for Business uses learning to onboard and train new community leaders. E5I developed their training program and onboarding process and learning experience as well as their delivery platform. It includes one-to-one touch points and regular monthly group training. Next, we will be helping them create managed learning paths for their members using their existing resources. Their new program allows them to expand their mission by reducing the amount of time it takes to start new communities and reducing turnover of their volunteer leaders.
The Labouré Society’s mission is to ‘rescue Catholic religious vocations from the barrier of student loan debt.’ Labouré uses learning to train aspiring priests, brothers, and sisters in collective fundraising to help them remove their student loan obstacles and enter formation. E5I took their existing training that they used to do in one weekend in -person and created an on-demand program, digital assets, and delivery platform that empowers and equips their ‘Aspirants’ before their fundraising class even starts. This is coupled with weekly group meetings and their live training weekend has become a venue for deeper learning and building relationships which has expanded and enhanced their program and success for their mission.
The Redemption Project’s mission is to ‘partner with employers to provide inmates with mentoring opportunities while incarcerated and meaningful employment upon release.’ The Redemption Project uses learning to educate inmates while still incarcerated and also to educate employers on creating a second chance hiring program within their companies so they can tap into a motivated employment pool of talent. E5I evaluated their curriculum, digitized their training, and built a delivery platform approved for use in the state prison system. They combine the on-demand portion of the training for their inmates with a weekly in-person class that goes deeper into the topics with discussion. This change in their learning allows them to rapidly expand their mission into other state prison systems.
Are you Ready to Expand your Mission?
If your wheels are starting to turn and you’re getting excited (and a little nervous) about creating or enhancing learning that will expand your company’s mission, click below to set up an exploration meeting with one of our E5I Guides. This will give you a first step forward in learning that makes your mission possible.
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