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You may wish to ask yourself:

n How can we make the mission both a practical tool and something
that is “new” every time that it is seen?

Research – Robert Cialdini and many others worldwide

Take your mind back, if you will, to your student days. Were you a swot
who worked consistently and hard? Or were you, as I was, one who skipped
lectures, sweated on deadlines to deliver work, but took a pride in your
ability to wing it? If you were the latter type, how did you feel as the
dreaded final examinations approached and you found that after three or
four years of “work” your mind was a blank and you were doomed to fail-
ure. It gave little comfort that many of your friends, barroom buddies and
the like, were in the same alarming situation. You and they were poten-
tially in deep “doodoo” and you would jump at any way out – or would you?

Bob Cialdini an American professor of psychology and global expert on
the behaviour of used-car salesmen (I’m not joking, he really is the leading
expert on what used-car sales people, the ultimate “compliance profes-
sionals” get up to in order to win a sale), would approach his students with
the solution to their examination problem. He would offer them some addi-
tional tuition, based firmly on the key topic areas almost certain to appear
in the forthcoming examinations. To half his students he would explain
that he would have to put his neck on the line with the Senate to ask for
the additional resources, so he needed their absolute verbal assurance that
they would attend every one of any additional tutorials that he was able to
schedule. The students gave, hand on metaphorical heart, the assurance
that come hell or high water they would be there. To the second half,
Cialdini put a slightly different condition. He asked them to sign a paper
to confirm that they would attend every session.

He would then hold his extra tutorials at the most anti-social hour, in
the most inaccessible part of the university in the most uncomfortable
room that he could find in the early hours – preferably a room that was
consistently freezing even on a summer dawn. The tutorials were certainly
of great value to all attendees, but after the first, those who had given their
word verbally to be there began to miss sessions. After a few meetings a
mere 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the “word only” students remained and
these drifted away until only one or two diehards were in evidence. Those
who had publicly signed to be there, however, continued to attend in full
force, shocked that some of their peers could so readily break their word.

Asking people the simple question: “will you commit to this?” is easy
and leads to easy answers. If you really want people to commit your ques-
tion needs to be more along the lines of “will you publicly commit in a prov-
able manner?” The difference is subtle, but in behavioural terms it is far
from being trivial.

Is signing the mission statement “over the top” after all?

The big picture 17