Austin Improv Mission Statement

[acrouch]

Bob and Andy have been charged with crafting a Mission Statement, Vision Statement and statement of Core Values with the help of you fine people.

A brainstorming session in the October 22 meeting resulted in the following ideals to be included in the finished copy:
oImprov Community
oGrowth
oAwareness
oProfessional
oAll-Inclusive
oSupport
oFoster talent
oFoster Growth
oOutreach
oTeaching
oPublicity
oDiversity of Arts
oNon-Racial discrimination
oCreativity
oTheatrical Form
oDeveloping an Austin-style of Improv
o…and cookies

It was also decided that that the Mission Statement, Vision Statement and Core Values should also include the following sentiments:
obe benefit oriented,
oabout community growth
oa declaration of we want and how we will go about doing that.
oTransforming a person from general public  audience member  student performer  teacher  guru
oDevelop what it would take to achieve the above process
oApply improv lessons into people’s everyday life

Tune in here for more developments.

[acrouch]

Here's a mission statement Bob came up with back in the day:

Promote improvisational theatre in
Central Texas and develop sustainable
performance, practice, management,
and teaching skills for Austin's
improvisational theatre community.

People agreed that this is an awesome start, and that it covers most of our internal goals, but that we need to add an outward focus. We want to create an organization that supports what we do... because we want what we do to have an impact on the greater community.

[sirnoze]

Great start. Lots of good words to work from.

Let's make sure we do not fall into the trap many businesses fall into and craft a mission statement with vapid and vacuous language. As we know, most mission statements look great in picture frames on the walls at headquarters but collect dust and are not acted upon by employees. Let's strive to rise above this and think MANTRAS more than mission statements.

Click below for great take on why MANTRAS trump mission statements:
http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/ArtOfTheStart.pdf
(Read pages 5 - 9)

[acrouch]

If I had to choose a mantra, I'd say "Put it out there, make it good."

Put it out there, make it good.
Put it out there, make it good.
Put it out there, make it good.

[arclight]

Great start. Lots of good words to work from.

Let's make sure we do not fall into the trap many businesses fall into and craft a mission statement with vapid and vacuous language. As we know, most mission statements look great in picture frames on the walls at headquarters but collect dust and are not acted upon by employees. Let's strive to rise above this and think MANTRAS more than mission statements.

Click below for great take on why MANTRAS trump mission statements:
http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/ArtOfTheStart.pdf
(Read pages 5 - 9)

I like Guy Kawasaki; he's a hell of a motivator and somewhere I have a copy of his 'eat like a bird, poop like an elephant / eat your own dogfood' book.

And I agree that most mission statements (like many things formed by committee) are crap.

However.

I was charged with drafting a mission statement, preferably one that's short, sensible, and useful in daily practice. The reason that many mission statements get framed and ignored is because they are drafted by people who think they're forced to have a mission statement before they can read Chapter 3 of "Whatever for Dummies", not because they ever expect to use it.

The thing is, a mantra is a phrase to live by, a more amorphous inspiration statement like Google's "Don't Be Evil." Which is nice, but doesn't tell me a damn thing about the point of their organization. Something that in one or two sentences can be used as a litmus test to determine whether a course of action or decision is consistent with the organization's reason for existing.

I'll give an example using the sample mission statement I originally created:

"Promote improvisational theatre in
Central Texas and develop sustainable
performance, practice, management,
and teaching skills for Austin's
improvisational theatre community."

and the suggested mantra of:

"Put it out there, make it good."

Let's say we wanted to open a venue. Lots of pros and cons to that, it's a big undertaking with a lot of risk and uncertainty but one potentially with a great payoff.

Does our own venue:

"Promote improvisational theatre" - yes, in that there's performance & classroom space

"in Central Texas" - yeah; where else would it be?

"and develop sustainable" - maybe; how likely is it to remain solvent or managable?

"performance, practice, management, and teaching skills" - it'll definitely develop management skills but it depends on how much the venue is used to show, rehearse, or teach improv. Again, this may come down to solvency - if we can't keep the place afloat primarily as an improv theater we're operating just another venue and we've diverted from our mission.

"for Austin's improvisational theatre community." - as above; if it's not primarily serving the Austin improvisational theatre community then we are not fulfilling our stated mission.

So this leads us to seriously question the decision to operate a theatre. Sure, if we have good reason to believe that we can run a theater that can a) remain solvent and managable, and b) that will be used primarily for teaching, rehearsing, and performing improv. In this case the mission statement drives us to analyze both the financial aspects of venue management as well as the artistic mission, something that a mantra would not necessarily do.

Note that a good mission statement tells you both what you should be doing as well as what you shouldn't. That may be more important in the long run.

I agree that a mantra such as Google's "Don't Be Evil" is catchier and easier to remember than a mission statement. However, the flip side of this is Google's mission statement:

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." (from http://www.google.com/corporate/)

which just about perfectly explains why they consider search (web, image, USENET, desktop), instant messaging, mail, scanning books, Orkut, and even ads to be relevant to their primary business. They don't sell hardware (much, anymore), they don't release a lot of client software, etc., but they do make it it pretty damn easy to find what you're looking for, whatever it is you're looking for.

I believe a mission statement and a mantra should go hand in hand (they certainly shouldn't conflict) but for the purpose of limiting the scope of our operations, I feel very strongly that we come up with a terse, specific mission statement with a minimum of boring useless words like 'quality', 'excellence', 'diverse', and 'dynamic' - the last thing I want is a long-winded, vapid useless mission statement. We can worry about a mantra later.

PS: That PDF will take over your computer - the person who thought it would be a good idea to make it take up the whole screen and disable the navigation controls on your PDF reader should be punched, repeatedly.

[sirnoze]

... sounds like you have great handle on crafting a mission statement that will not collect dust and that improvisers will act upon.

[arclight]

Ok, how about this:

Our mission is to promote improvisational theatre in Central Texas and develop sustainable performance, practice, management, and teaching skills for Austin's improvisational theatre community. We believe that improvisation is a vital and viable art form which provides unique and invaluable benefits to the individual and the community and we strive to raise awareness of improvisational theatre through performance, teaching, and community outreach.