Mission Matters and Socially Impactful Organizations : Making a Tree of Difference

By Siddharth Peter de Souza, Siddhi Gupta and Priyanka

Introduction

Mission Statements allow an individual and organisation to share a snapshot of what they do - with their communities, stakeholders, funders and anyone interested in their work. Its main purpose is to effectively and authentically communicate the dreams and aspirations of the group. Missions are often seen as a statement, as something that is concrete, succinct, and something to be aspired to. A mission can also include various considerations including the purpose of an organisation, the values that underpin it, and the change it seeks to shape.

At Justice Adda and Manupatra, we believe an enabling environment could help organisations explore and think about missions as relations that organisations have with the people and groups around them. 

With this in mind, we wanted to explore missions as ideas that grow and evolve as the organisation grows, and not something set in stone. Missions with this approach are promises that connect with others and become homes for others’ missions - foregrounding a relationality to how they emerge, and sustain themselves. 

At the Justice Makers Mela in Bhopal, organised by Agami, we designed a workshop around missions for organisations and initiatives dealing with social justice issues, with the idea of working with groups with different degrees of experience, motivations and at different points in their journeys in developing a mission or in re-imagining one. Concretely, we wanted to create a space to think about what it means to craft a mission for their organisations.

For our workshop, we asked: Could we think of missions not as statements but as trees? Trees build connections with people, animals, the environment, and these relations offer possibilities to introspect into the ways and means in which organizations too, can be embedded into social, economic, cultural and political milieu. While trees stand strong and have much to offer, they are also beings which foreground growth, vitality and resilience.

What is a mission?

To begin with, we asked the question: What constitutes a mission?

Drawing from James Baldwin, we began by talking of the role of dreams and the inner conviction that drives these dreams. Baldwin speaks to how dreams can shape and are shaped by the world, stating “Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world”.

Such an idea resonated with us in thinking of missions. We wanted to surface how our inner convictions are entangled with our dreams, and together shape the kinds of impact we wish to have. Our participants were asked to engage with  the following aspects

These three aspects raised the following questions

Inner conviction speaks to the aspect of what drives us?

Dreams speak to the aspect of what inspires us?

Impacts speak to the aspect of what we want to change?

Through this reflection, we wanted to explore our hypothesis that a mission does not work in isolation and that a mission matters if it matters to people one works with. With this in mind, in thinking about a mission we examined the following considerations around audience, needs and capabilities, contributions, and trust.

Audience: Who is your audience?	Needs and capabilities: What do they need and what are they capable of accomplishing?
Contribution: What do you offer?	Trust: Why should they trust you?

Through thinking in terms of these components we wanted our participants to look at missions with granularity without getting overwhelmed by the scale of defining a mission. 

With this in mind, and having facilitated a conversation about missions, we then moved to thinking about concretising these missions in a framework that participants could develop, and then take home with them.

The mission tree

The mission tree framework is useful because it allows for diverse interpretations, and it is a metaphor that can contain the responsive, dynamic and contextual nature of mission statements.

We asked our workshop participants to start by drawing a tree.  This can be quite a simple exercise but in drawing the tree, there are also different details that can emerge.

When we think of a tree, what are things that come to mind? 

This involved thinking through what was essential for the tree. Was it the roots? Branches? Trunk? Leaves? Reflecting on the essentials of a tree made us think of elements that at first were not as obvious, the fruit, the soil, and the water that is used to keep it alive.

To make a mission tree, we therefore  began a series of discussions organised along the following lines:

What emerged as responses were trees that looked as unique as our participants and their areas of work. 

From arts-based organisations to lawyers, each individual created a tree that was representative of their motivations, dreams and desired impact. 

Participants interpreted the prompts differently; roots meant different things to different people. For some, it meant the stakeholder groups they were able to reach out to, while for others it meant resources. 

Fruits were seen to be collaborators in some cases (who plucked the fruit), others saw them as communities that they worked with (who nurtured the fruit) or even as clients (who ate the fruit). 

Branches too evoked different responses, while some felt these were the networks necessary for an organisation to thrive, others saw them as forms of dissemination, advocacy, and community building.

Each participant discussed their tree with a person next to them. These conversations were rich and allowed them to share their mission with a sounding board as they visualised it. It gave them another perspective on how their mission can be articulated and represented. 

In doing so, they were able to see what was obvious as well as hidden in how they were conveying their missions to the world around them.

Justice Adda and Manupatra both operate with the mission to make law accessible and communication is key to achieve this. This workshop operationalised our own mission while giving participants a tool to articulate their mission and communicate it in new ways. 

If you work within the domain of law and justice and are hoping to develop new ways to build access for the work you do, please reach out to us and we would love to work together. 

(Siddharth is Founder and Partner  at Justice Adda, Siddhi is Partner and Design and communication Lead at Justice Adda and Priyanka serves as the COO at Manupatra, India's pioneering legal tech company.)