This past fall I finally decided to pick up a book that had sat on my shelf for over a year. Mission Drift is a book written by Peter Greer and Chris Horst that helps organizations determine whether they are in danger of drifting from their original mission.
In the foreword, Andy Crouch says, “The greatest temptations, it seems, come at moments of great success or promise of success, the moments when it is easiest to forget our desperate need for God, without whom we can do nothing truly good or enduring.”
I highly recommend this book for its insights into organizations that have done it right, those that haven’t, and what it takes to stay Mission True to one’s original goals and ideals.
Unfortunately, “It’s the exception that an organization stays true to its mission,” said Chris Crane, president and CEO of Edify. “The natural course — the unfortunate natural evolution of many originally Christ-centered missions — is to drift,” he said.
Without rewriting the entire book here, I would like to point out some crucial parts that took my breath away.
On page 92, the authors tell the story of Ruth Callanta, who is a leading expert on development having worked for the World Bank and the Philippine Business for Social Progress, which facilitated ‘poverty alleviation efforts between business and nonprofits.”
Her travels have given her a broader perspective in development across the globe and as she observed more closely a startling pattern began to surface. “The aid and development community was inhibited because of pride and ambition. International aid agencies came in and truly believed they had all the solutions — so they steamrolled over the local citizen and imposed ill fitting solutions.”
Her conclusion was that, “Greed, pride, and self-centeredness keep even the noblest intentions from effectively working.”
If I can extrapolate a little bit here I would summarize her conclusions by saying that the best intentions with the best of plans will fail without the Spirit of God intervening to check greed, pride, and self-centeredness. In other words, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the secret sauce, the missing ingredient in the mix that makes it all work. Even when “doing everything right” it takes self-sacrifice, humility, and love to produce real change, and the giver of those qualities is none other than Jesus Himself.
So, if any of us feels tempted to “tone down our message” in the hopes of getting more funding, or having ‘deeper’ influence, just pause and think - what kind of successful influence can we really have without Christ? And what amount of money can really make things work apart from the power and inspiration of God’s Spirit which happens to be the only force on the planet I know of that can conquer the vices of greed, pride, and self-centeredness?
The other area where this book really hit me hard was in the arena of HR and developing your team. “Leading organizations,” they say, “are patient in hiring and believe that an open position, no matter how painful, is still better than a position filled with the wrong person.”
“Close enough” just isn’t “good enough” for Mission True organizations, said Phil Smith, who has served as CEO and chairman of several publicly traded companies. ‘It is not your enemies you have to worry about, it is your supporters and employees who ‘almost’ have the vision. Eat the whole enchilada, or go somewhere else.’”
It’s all about the DNA of your organization and the culture that you cultivate on a day in and day out basis that makes the difference. As Phil Smith says later on, “One of the primary reasons for Mission Drift is that people join your organization who are very excited about portions of your vision, but are either opposed to or don’t care about the rest of it.”
Mission True organizations recognize that each and every employee represents the mission of the organization. So, hire well.
All in all, this book really excels, and I hope that other like-minded leaders will pick it up and learn from their astute observations and research.
After reading it, I think that you will conclude with me that “Mission Drift” isn’t just something that happens if you do something wrong, it is happening all the time, and only a well thought plan with multiple layers of accountability will prevent us from slipping too.
