How would you rate these mission statements?

What’s below:

1. How do you rate these mission statements?
2. How sports teams can show you how to make your mission statement better
3. Perspectives on focus from Yo-Yo Ma

While visiting my brother outside of Portland, Oregon a couple of months ago, I signed both of my boys up for an introduction to karate lesson, something they have asked about for some time. For just under a half hour, they spent time with Alex, the sensei of Next Generation Karate, who put them through a number of drills while talking to them about the ideas behind karate. I watched from outside the dojo, talking to his business manager at the desk — who happened to be his mother. She talked to me about how he had come to karate at age 11, and fallen in love with it immediately. How he apprenticed at another dojo to understand how to run the business. How dojos can vary — some “McDojo’s” promise a black belt in a few years, regardless of actual accomplishment — and how they maintain challenging standards at their dojo. “Our mission is to build discipline,” she explained. “Karate is the way that we do that.”

Gearing up for a fall of speaking engagements, and couldn’t be more excited!

The website offers the official position of the dojo, going even deeper conceptually: “Our premier goal at Next Generation Karate is to develop well-rounded students that demonstrate qualities of discipline, focus, and self-respect.” Karate is not the goal — the purpose is to develop values. Karate is the method.

Does your mission reflect your commitment to values, or only focus on what you do?

Her understanding of mission as purpose was profound, and reminded me of a math professor I’d come across just the week before. An multi- award-winning professor at UT Austin, professor of a MOOC course as well as several Great Courses on mathematics, statistics and thinking, Michael Starbird has been teaching for decades.

“I teach people how to think,” he said. “Math is the way I do that.”

So many examples of mission statements have to do with the specifics of what is being done, and that isn’t a bad thing, but as both of these examples demonstrate, a mission connected to the greater…