After articulating our Company Vision, it was on to the Mission Statement. Recognizing my own "control" issues, I decided to engaged my trusted business coach to facilitate this process between my three most senior team members and me.   Although I was a bit hesitant (because of course I knew exactly what I wanted in the mission statement !), I was pleasantly surprised to discover that not only we were all very passionately committed to the process,  but to the essense of the mission as well.  After about two hours of wordsmithing, we were all excited about the final product.

There were a few points I was fully committed to.  First, I wanted to eliminated the word "management" to every extent possible.   We truly do little actual management in this industry, nor should we.   "Facilitate", yes  (however I was over-ruled on this word).  "Empower", "guide", "lead" - these were all verbs we could agreed on.

"Customer Service" was another term I refused to incorporate in this mission statement.  Everyone lays claim to this, few actually deliver.  In preparing for the process of crafting our mission, I spent a bit of time googling definitions.  My favorite was the Wictionary definition of  service  as "an event in which an entity takes the responsibility that something desirable happens on the behalf of another entity".  This definition seems to sum up our role as an agent, as well as the role of our primary client, the volunteer Boards of our communities - - working to effect positive change.

As the Team Leader, I've been struggling for a while with articulating our company vision.  It's something that I've "felt" but the words have escaped me.  Finally one morning, there was a clip from a speech given by President Obama on the morning news.   He was talking about community and the words for our vision came to me in a flash.  "Transforming Condominiums into Communities . . .  One Association at a Time". 

I excitedly brought this statement back to our senior team.  They all agreed that it captured exactly what we do in our style of association management - - -  our "uncommon offering".  However, what they quickly pointed out, was that they found the "One Association at a Time" part to be problematic.  They thought that someone may want to know when we would be getting to their Association!

I still like that part, though.  I think it represents the level of flexibility we strive for in delivering our services.  So, for now it stays!