Mission Moments are sacred. I learned that from my friends Derek and Laura Cabrera. Those moments of interaction with my customers (my clients) that matter…matter deeply. Not just those instances when something cool happens. Mission Moments are moments when the work we’ve done together gives birth to a new reality. Deep? Yep. That’s the point.
I have four parts to my (THINK’ID8’s) mission. THINK.Design.Innovate.IDeate. There’s nothing too profound about each separately. I put these four words together years ago to guide my daily work more so for how each relates to each and how that relationship helps me help others. They represent a system of processes that when working together bring about BIG shifts in people, teams, departments and whole organizations. They are never done but always starting. I know…deep again. I’ve built my own ideas on Mission Moments over the years. When helping others think, it’s great to co-celebrate moments of clarity. But, that’s not enough from my perspective to create a Mission Moment. For me, Mission Moments are those moments when all four of my mission parts come together and are witnessed as the system they are for my clients through some revelation. That “holy sh…” moment, goosebumps and all. That’s a Mission Moment for me.
Like most consultants, I have a bag of tricks to help those I work with THINK.Design.Innovate.IDeate. I heard Mathew Chow (IDEO) speak about managing to change and one of his techniques hit home. The question was “How do we manage to change within our organization?” and can we articulate our practice, either written or in unwritten format? He shared a simple method of placing a group into a situation that has them reflect on how they would manage to a specific change. Awesome…a new addition to my sack.
I headed to my local 5&10 cent store, I love Beiters by the way. I’m working with an amazing private school, the West Branch School in Williamsport, PA. I was looking for a blue hat and wow, I found the perfect blue hat. Totally blinged-out with sequins and a butterfly. West Branch’s logo includes a Monarch butterfly. Perfect!
I pulled out the hat and posed (and posed with the hat on by the way) a simple change. Everyone in the organization would receive and wear the hat, every day, all day. How would we manage to that change? Now, the conversation was great, lots of 
process, decision making, communication planning and other aspects of change management were shared. But then, the Mission Moment. “Change should be done to support our Vision.” Wait…what? “All this stuff we just talked about, the change, if we want to change, we need to show how it supports our vision.”
The conversation that followed was for me a Mission Moment. My clients created a new reality for themselves. Our time together on our new Journey (which we branded #SojournTogether….Reflect Together.Delve Together.Stay Together) to explore their Vision and establish new organizational development practices had come into crystal clear focus. This clarity was personal, organizational and unique to them. That’s why its hard to write about. From the outside, maybe even hard to see why it was special let alone sacred. But for them, for us, for me, it was a sacred moment that I had to capture.
Why are Mission Moments critical. My vision for the last several years has been “A VISION’ABLE” world. My Mission supports my dream that all organizations have the capability to create a vision and work toward it and I do my part to help raise them to that level. Using vision and mission, we give organizations and the people within them purpose. Mission Moments highlight purpose, create connection and motivate us to dig deeper and continue our vision-focused journeys. That’s pretty awesome.