Thoughts on "mission" OR why "mission" != "mission statement"

The purpose of exploring "mission" is to provide enough and only just enough guidance to support independent action.

Too little guidance leads to confusion and unaligned action; too much guidance undermines autonomy and creative initiative.

What needs to be known for a mission?

• Context
• Intention
• Constraints
• Implications

What needs to be communicated?  Any of the previous items that are non-obvious for the particular organisation, team, individual

The simpler the context, intention, constraints, implications, the more likely that a one-line mission statement is sufficient.  If you assume that a one-line mission statement is not enough, you'll be right in the vast majority of cases.

Because of the problem of false understanding (we believe we understand each other but actually don't), the important part of mission is not the mission statement but rather the dialogue to validate shared understanding of context, intention, constraints, and implications.  A mission statement might be an input to trigger this dialogue AND/OR an output to remind of that dialogue.