Manage Your Project Portfolio, 2nd Edition

Draft a Mission from Scratch

An actionable mission contains a verb related to the results of the organization. If you’re an airline, a mission might be “Fly people and their luggage together.” If you look back at the missions in ​Define an Actionable Mission for the Organization​, you can see that each mission grabs the reader with a strong verb.

To draft a mission with your group without looking at your current work, try these steps:

1. Brainstorm the mission pieces. Define what you do for whom and the value people received from that work.

2. Specify strong verbs.

3. Eliminate adverbs.

4. Iterate until you feel comfortable with the mission.

Don’t worry if you can’t define your mission in a quick thirty-minute meeting. A team of individual contributors ...