13
Mission: Making a Difference

“It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.”

~ TOM BROKAW

As you put your values into practice, working toward your vision, you’ll need a clear mission (what you are about) guiding your firm every day. As a reminder, vision and mission are related, but they don’t express the same idea. Here’s the difference:

Vision.	Articulates what you want for your business—what it will look like in the future. A vision is idealistic: how big the company will grow and how it will be perceived by the outside world. A vision does not exist today, only in the future.
Mission.	Clarifies your purpose—the value you’ll offer, the services you’ll provide, and the ways in which you want your clients’ lives to change. A mission exists today and tomorrow.

Missions come in various forms; some are written statements, but others may not be written. The statement itself and its form are not important. The key is for the mission to capture the passion of the firm to serve others. Missions must state your defining purpose for obtaining and serving your clients and communities. Sometimes, the mission will include serving your employees and their families, as well. That purpose is timeless.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss the benefits that a mission brings your accounting firm. I’ll share with you many examples of well-crafted missions to which you may compare your mission. Included in this chapter will be various worksheets to guide you through the missioning process. Finally, I’ll point out some pitfalls with missions and then how to build your personal mission.

“Our mission is probably similar to a lot of other firms,” says Rich Caturano, managing director of RSM McGladrey, Inc., in Boston, MA, “We want to provide opportunities for our people, we want to deliver outstanding client service, and we want to make money. The goal is to be the best firm that we can, the best firm in New England. If you really want to be the best, you can’t stand still. The challenges in today’s marketplace are going to require us to change.”

Don’t be a leader who majors in minor things! That won’t take your team very far. “Our mission is to serve and protect,” David Deeter, founder of the top-100 firm Frazier & Deeter, LLC, in Atlanta, GA, says.

We serve the clients’ compliance needs and help them attain their financial goals. And we help protect their financial assets from outside forces, like taxation, government incursion, and competition.

We’ve started a couple of sister companies. We have the largest wealth advisory firm in the Southeast, as far as I know. Signature FD has $1.1 billion of assets under management. We also have insurance and mortgage divisions. We are now starting a commercial insurance company. We’ve tried to become more of a full-service firm to our clients.

Without a mission, leaders tend to be hesitant and indecisive, and they focus on lowerpriority strategies. Hesitancy and indecisiveness are not characteristics of good leaders. To develop a solid mission, an owner group must understand its real stakeholders. Naturally, the owners have a capital stake in the firm, but employees and their families also share a stake. Clients have a stake in the success of your firm, and the community has a stake in your firm.

A large percentage of companies have mission statements. Mission statements are designed to provide direction and thrust to a firm, an enduring statement of purpose. A mission statement acts as an invisible hand that guides the people in the firm. When you ask accountants in well-led firms what it is like to be part of a great accounting firm, what is most striking is the emphasis on the meaningfulness of their experience: people talk about being connected to something larger than themselves. It becomes clear that their experience as part of a great firm stands out as a singular period of life lived to the fullest.

Many leaders also define their personal missions. A personal mission is a bit different from a company mission, but the fundamental principles are the same. Writing a personal mission statement offers the opportunity to establish what’s important to you. A key to developing a mission is to connect with your own unique purpose and the profound satisfaction that comes from fulfilling it. When you have your own personal mission clearly in place, then you can better determine the kind of accounting firm with which you should best be aligned.

The Benefits of a Mission

Notice that I am using the word mission, not mission statement. I think that too often, people and firms get so hung up on the wording that they fail to capture their true purpose in life or business. Developing a mission is a very challenging process, if done well. Owners of accounting firms must make a serious commitment to the process, but the benefits are well worth the effort.

The benefits of a well-thought-out mission include the following:

▴ Missions build culture. The culture of a firm emanates from the owners’ purpose and their mission. The effort to modify firm culture can be daunting, but the acceptance of a firm mission can ease the task and help overcome resistance to these changes.

▴ Missions build unity and balance. A well-crafted and understood mission can rally the entire firm around a core set of values and reasons for being. Focusing on the most important purposes of a firm brings clarity to expectations.

▴ Missions keep you focused. A shared mission is the simplest way to keep everyone in the firm focused on what you need to do now. Without that day-to-day mission, people can drift away from your long-term vision without realizing it.

▴ Missions help allocate resources. No firm has all the resources it could use, whether financial, environmental, or human. Resource allocation decisions are among the hardest, but linking those decisions to a firm’s mission makes them more reasoned and defensible.

▴ Missions help stimulate ideas into action. Undertaking the strategic planning steps of goal setting, developing objectives, and defining measures are impossible without the critical step of defining the purpose or mission. This applies to the firm as a whole, as well as to service specialties, industry niches, and individuals.

One of the guiding principles of defining your firm’s mission is to allow the mission to percolate up from all your stakeholders. The more they are involved, the more they will be committed to executing your mission or purpose regularly. Of course, we must connect what matters to our clients and passion to serve.

Great missions capture a purpose that people care about beyond their own self-interests. They transcend time and provide a strong sense of direction for everyone involved in your business.

Clarifying Your Mission

As you get started, remember that a mission describes the overall purpose of the firm. If your firm already has a vision statement or writes a vision statement before developing the mission statement, use the vision statement as you begin writing the mission. Read the vision statement; then, ask yourself, “Why does this vision, this future image of our firm, exist? What is its purpose?” The purpose is often the same as the mission.

Just as we discussed about vision statements in chapter 11, “Vision: Reality in the Future,” the process that your firm will use to create its mission should reflect the firm’s culture. Your process may be highly analytical and rational or highly creative and divergent. Make sure that the process feels right to all participants based on your firm’s personality and values.

The mission should be a concise statement of business strategy developed from the customers’ perspective. It should fit with the vision for the business. The mission should answer three questions:

▴ What do we do?

▴ How do we do it?

▴ For whom do we do it?

What Do We Do?

This question should not be answered in terms of what is physically delivered to clients but by the real or psychological needs that are fulfilled when clients buy your products or services. Clients make purchase decisions for many reasons, including financial, economical, convenience, logistical, and emotional factors. Or to put it another way, think of the benefits you provide clients, not the features. For example, although we might physically deliver an audit report, the client’s need may be for financing. We might deliver a tax return, but the client wants the convenience and assurance of having a professional provide this service.

How Do We Do It?

Most accounting firms do their actual work in similar ways, but there are important differences in how firms are organized. The most prevalent one that I’ve already mentioned is as individual “empires,” where each partner handles a wide variety of clients, which is in contrast to firms that are organized into true expert specialty areas, such as construction practices, hospital practices, and so on. Similar issues to note would be how new accountants are trained as they advance and how new work is obtained.

For Whom Do We Do It?

The answer to this question will help you focus your marketing efforts. Though many small business owners would like to believe otherwise, not everyone is a potential client because clients will almost always have both demographic and geographic limitations. When starting out, it is generally a good idea to define the demographic characteristics (age, income, and so on) of clients who are likely to engage you, and then, define your geographic service area. In the age of the Internet, we still find that over 90 percent of an accounting firm’s clients originate within a geographic area close to its office. However, as those clients relocate to other parts of the world, they tend to keep their accounting firm if the service is good. Although that phenomenon may change in the future, the original personal relationship seems to be a major factor for clients. As you grow, you can add new client groups and expand your geographic focus. The best way to begin this is to segment the largest 20 percent of your client base as the demographic that you are most well-suited to serve.

More Than One Mission? Maybe So

Most businesses have multiple client groups that engage you for different reasons. If this is the case for your firm, you can write one mission statement for each client group. For example, a construction niche group might have a mission that reads as follows:

The mission of the construction specialty group of Smith & Smith CPAs is to give our clients the tools they need to acquire below-market financing, competitive surety bonding, and the ability to estimate and complete projects on time and on budget.

As a final thought, remember that your vision and mission are meant to help guide the business, not lock you into a particular direction. As your company grows, and the competitive environment changes, your mission may require change to include additional or different fulfilled needs, delivery systems, or customer groups. With this in mind, revisit your vision and mission periodically to determine whether changes are needed.

Six Steps to Developing a Mission Statement

Exercises 13-1 through 13-6 encompass the six key exercises to developing a mission statement. Work through these exercises with your key partners, team members, and stakeholders to develop a comprehensive mission that clarifies the key what, how, and whom questions previously mentioned. Arriving at a mission statement that all stakeholders can support may require several iterations. The hardest part is usually developing a brief but descriptive statement that is unique to you, rather than a long corporate-sounding one that could apply to any firm.

Exercise 13-1: Client Statement

The client statement is the “who” of your firm; it identifies the target market and basic strategies that you will employ to reach that market. In one sentence, articulate for whom your firm is intended, using the following questions as a guideline:

Who have you identified as the target market of your firm (for example, publicly listed companies, small and midsized businesses, individuals, medical doctors, just to name a few)? ________________________________________________________________________
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What activities and subsectors are they engaged in (for example, nonprofit schools, construction companies, high-net-worth individuals, bankrupt individuals and businesses)? ________________________________________________________________________
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Where are they located (for example, within 50 miles of your office, regionally within 500 miles of your office, nationally, or internationally)? ________________________________________________________________________
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How will you reach them (for example advertising and public relations, word of mouth, direct sales calls)? ________________________________________________________________________
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Exercise 13-2: Problem Statement

The problem statement is the “why” of your service line. It defines the problem that you are seeking to address. In a few lines, summarize the problem, using the following questions as a guideline:

What is the predominant need that you identified among your target population (for example investment capital formation, government grants, tax savings redeployed into capital, convenience of compliance, confidence in provider, prestige of provider)? ________________________________________________________________________
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What are the constraints that the target populations face in maximizing profit in their businesses (for example adequate capital, skilled workforce, leadership, competition)? ________________________________________________________________________
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If you have identified several problems, be pragmatic about which ones you can realistically tackle.

Exercise 13-3: Statement of Purpose

The statement of purpose describes “what” your firm seeks to accomplish. It answers the question, What will be the ultimate result of your work? The statement of purpose uses infinitive verbs such as to eliminate, to increase, to improve, and to prevent, indicating a change in status related to the problems that your firm is seeking to alleviate.

In defining purpose, focus on results rather than methods. Consider questions like “How is the situation going to be different because of the services of our firm?” and “What is going to change for the target clients?” For example, the purpose of a quarterly client meeting schedule would not be “to provide quality accounting services to entrepreneurs” but to “improve the financial well-being of our client entrepreneurs.”

It is crucial that your statement of purpose be focused on filling a need in the marketplace, not your financial profits.

In one or two sentences, using infinitive verbs, describe the desired result of your firm and the problem or condition that you aim to change. ________________________________________________________________________
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Exercise 13-4: Business Statement

The business statement describes “how” your firm will achieve its purpose by depicting the activities that you will undertake. Most purpose statements yield several potential strategies, each one constituting a different business or service line. For example, if your statement of purpose is “to improve the financial well-being of client entrepreneurs,” your business statement could be “provide regular advice around forward-thinking strategies, business training, and improved technology,” among other options. Writing a business statement clarifies the means to accomplishing your purpose.

If the word and appears in either your statement of purpose or business statement, ask yourself if you are equally committed to both ideas connected by the word and. If not, acknowledge that one idea is more important by prioritizing your ideas while writing your mission statement.

Write a business statement for each statement of purpose.
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Exercise 13-5: Value Statement

The value statement communicates the “who” of your firm by embodying the beliefs and principles of your service lines from chapter 11, “Vision: Reality in the Future.” Values guide team members, management, and leadership in performing their duties. Often, the values of a firm, such as commitment to lifelong learning, integrity, innovation, and excellence, are important elements in a staff member’s decision to work with a firm. Ideally, the personal values of stakeholders are aligned with the values of the service lines of the firm.

Through a participatory process of developing a written value statement, staff and leadership have an opportunity to delineate the values that they want the firm to encompass and to realign them, if necessary. In addition, such a statement holds stakeholders accountable in their everyday work lives.

In a few lines, write a value statement for your firm.
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Exercise 13-6: Writing a Mission Statement

Synthesize the work completed in exercises 13-1 through 13-5 into a comprehensive statement. Remember, a mission statement should be brief, consisting of just a few lines or sentences.
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Problems to Keep in Mind

There are many reasons that missioning projects fail to work very well. Often, the mission is purely aspirational, and there is little or no commitment or follow-through. Some missions are not reinforced by the business owners, and their employees do not buy in to the mission. Sometimes, the employees can’t even quote the mission. Some missions don’t make sense, or they are not clear. One firm said, “Our mission is created by our people, and the best way to have a vision is to create one.” Laughable, yes. Many firms say something like, “Our mission is to provide quality services to our clients.” Although this sounds positive, this is an example of a poorly thought-out mission; it says nothing about how the firm is going to make its clients’ lives better. Also, the sentiment is so generic that it could be written about many companies.

Here are some final considerations on preparing your mission:

1. When wording your mission statement, consider the firm’s products, services, markets, values, and concern for public image and maybe even the priorities of activities for survival.

2. Once you have a mission statement, consider any changes that may be needed in the wording during a strategic planning process. Ensure that the mission statement makes priorities clear for leaders and team members, showing how services should be delivered.

3. When refining the statement, a useful exercise is to add or delete a word from the mission to see how this changes the scope of the mission statement and to assess whether its wording is concise.

4. Ensure that the mission statement includes sufficient description to clearly separate your firm from others.

Successful mission statements can vary widely depending on the firm, but most will have a few characteristics in common, including the following:

▴ Simple. Your mission statement should be simple. This doesn’t mean that creating the statement is easy; it may require several drafts. But it does mean the statement should be concise. Use just enough words to capture the essence; most mission statements are too long. People want to add additional information and qualifications to the statement. Usually, these statements just confuse the reader and cloud the real meaning of your statement. Each successive draft of your statement should simplify and clarify the mission.

Carl George, former CEO of the national firm Clifton Gunderson LLP in Peoria, IL, says

We had a mission statement that was very typical of all CPA firms: quality service, client-oriented, value-added profit—all those terms in the mission statement—forward-looking, all good stuff. Back in the early 2000s we were in a retreat and I asked a question. I asked, “If you guys had to come up with two goals for CG, what would they be?” They said people and clients. So, we started playing around with it, and we came up with a mission: if you take care of your people, and you take care of your clients, everything else will fall into place.

We continued to work on it and developed another iteration: growth of our people, growth of our clients; all else follows. We wanted to have a mission that everybody remembers.

▴ Easy to remember. Your statements of vision and mission should be single thoughts that can easily be carried in the mind. To test the effectiveness of a mission statement in a business, ask its leaders, managers, and employees to tell you their vision and mission of the business. If they cannot instantaneously tell you both, the mission statement is of little use. The vision and mission guide the everyday activities of every person involved in the business. To be effective, your statements need to be short and simple, capturing the essence of what you want to accomplish.

▴ Fluid process. People agonize over writing mission statements. Granted, it is usually not an easy process. Don’t cast your statements in stone when you’re done; you should instead plan to update and modify them as your firm grows and changes. Once you’ve written your mission, use the statement for a period of time, and then, revisit it a few months or one year later. It is often easier to sharpen the statement at that time.

▴ Unique businesses. It is usually more important to write mission statements for unique or nontraditional businesses when the purpose of the business is not generally known. For example, if your firm only works with clients in one industry, you’ll want to emphasize this feature. Or if your firm contains a large percentage of highly unique service, such as state and local tax or international consulting, this may be an opportunity to make this clear in your mission. Mission statements are important for these businesses, so that everyone involved in the business understands what the business will accomplish and how it will be done. In essence, this means keeping everyone on the same page.

Developing a Personal Mission Statement

As part of the firm’s work, you may want to encourage individuals to create their own mission statements and encourage them to tie these to the firm’s statement. Share exercise 13-7 with your staff to assist them.

Exercise 13-7: Personal Mission Statement

The following steps will help you develop a personal mission statement.

Step 1: Identify past successes. Spend some time identifying four or five examples when you have had personal success in recent years. These successes could be at work, in your community, at home, and so on. Write them down. Try to identify whether there is a common theme or themes to these examples. Write these down.

Step 2: Identify core values. Develop a list of attributes that you believe identify who you are and your priorities. The list can be as long as you need. Once your list is complete, see if you can narrow your values to the five or six most important. Finally, see if you can choose the one value that is most central to you.

Step 3: Identify contributions. Make a list of the ways that you could make a difference. In an ideal situation, how could you contribute best to your

▴ family?

▴ firm?

▴ friends?

▴ community?

Step 4: Identify goals. Spend some time thinking about your priorities in life and the goals you have for yourself.

Make a list of your personal goals, perhaps in the short term (up to three years) and long term (beyond three years).

Step 5: Write your mission statement. Based on the first four steps and a better understanding of yourself, begin writing your personal mission statement.

Sample Personal Mission Statement Development

Here’s the thought process that one person followed through the five steps shown in exercise 13-7 to develop a mission statement.

Past Successes

▴ Developed new service features for tax and financial planning.

▴ Part of a team that developed a new positioning statement for tax planning.

▴ Helped Rotary Club with a fund-raiser that was very successful.

▴ Themes: Successes all relate to creative problem solving and execution of a solution.

Core Values

▴ Hard working

▴ Creativity

▴ Problem solving

▴ Positive

▴ Honest

▴ Spiritual

▴ Most important value: Creativity

Identify Contributions

▴ My family: To be a leader in terms of personal outlook, compassion for others, and maintaining an ethical code; to be a good mother and loving wife; to leave the world a better place for my children and their children.

▴ My firm: To lead by example and demonstrate how innovative and problem-solving products can be successful in terms of both solving a problem and profitability and revenue generation for the firm.

▴ My friends: To always have a hand held out for my friends for them to know that they can always come to me with any problem.

▴ My community: To use my talents to give back to my community.

Identify Goals

▴ Short term: To continue my career with a progressive accounting firm that allows me to use my skills, talent, and values to achieve success.

▴ Long term: To develop other outlets for my talents and a longer-term plan for diversifying my life and achieving both professional and personal success.

Mission Statement

To live life completely, honestly, and compassionately, with a healthy dose of realism mixed with the imagination and dreams that all things are possible if one sets his or her mind to finding an answer.

Final Thoughts

A personal mission statement is, of course, personal, but if you want to truly see whether you have been honest in developing your personal mission statement, I suggest sharing the results of this process with one or more people who are close to you. Ask for their feedback.

Your firm may want to undertake a comissioning process to align its corporate mission with those of the partners and team members. In comissioning, each service line, department, team, and person writes his or her mission and ties it into the firm’s mission. Leaders and employees talk about what is important to them and the value that they bring to their roles in the firm.

Finally, remember that neither a firm’s nor an individual’s mission statement should be blasted into stone. Set aside some time annually to review your firm’s mission statement and your own career, goals, and mission statement, and make adjustments, as necessary.

Creating the statements previously described may seem like a lot of busy work, but if done properly, mission statements (and the goals and objectives that follow from them) can save money and time and increase the odds that your business venture will succeed. Creating these statements will help you focus on the important aspects of your business. They will force you to focus on where you are going and how and when you will get there. Think of these statements as living documents that are changed as the needs of the business change. Too often, these statements are treated as iconic relics to be stored away in a safe place. If you don’t use them, you have wasted your time.

Conclusion

Missions come in all types: long and short, complex and simple. You will set yourself apart from your competitors and attract the best staff members and clients when you know what you are about: your purpose. When you can explain it to all your stakeholders, you, as a leader. will raise your game to the “big leagues.”

Once you’ve done the solid strategic planning of setting forth your vision, values, and mission, you have done the leader’s job of doing the right thing. Now, you can turn to the next topic of building management systems that will do things right. These topics are discussed in section IV, “Leading Systems,” and chapters 14, “Managing Processes for Your Future Firm,” and 15, “Building the Future Firm Continuously.” Having both leadership and management in harmony is the ideal combination for the progressive future accounting firm.