It also enables one to chart a new course when they're at a career crossroads. Writing a personal mission statement offers the opportunity to establish what's important to you, and can help guide you toward a decision on a particular job, company, or career field. A mission statement explains the organization's reason for being, and answers the question, "What business are we in?"Ī personal mission statement is a bit different from a company mission statement, but the fundamental principles are the same.
Mission statements are designed to provide direction and thrust to an organization, an enduring statement of purpose.Ī mission statement acts as an invisible hand that guides the people in the organization. When someone has really worked with this process and given it considerable thought and then shares with me their attempt to clarify it in writing, I recall a statement a mentor of mine gave to me when I first got involved in this work.A large percentage of companies, including most Fortune 500 companies, have corporate mission statements. Work with this process for a while, because when you’re done, it will provide guidance for the rest of your life. Don’t just find somebody else’s mission statement and say, “Well there’s a couple of good things there,” and just use theirs. You have many possible ways to fulfill that desire and that passion in you. Okay, I’d ask, does that mean start an orphanage? Does that mean have biological children? Does that mean adopting some developmentally disabled children? Does that mean that you raise the funds to create a summer program for some inner city kids to get out of the city and out into the country for a week or two at a time? Does it mean a scholarship for enthusiastic and budding musicians so that they can go to the university for a couple of weeks?īecause an interest in children can have so many manifestations, you need to select from among them. Sometimes a person might say to me she always felt she was going to do something with children. You can do so many things with your life.
Now what if you take that concept and apply it to you? And what if it’s not adjacent, what if it’s a part of the mall development, or what if it’s on the land that is going to be used for a high-rise condo? Or what if it is property in downtown Hong Kong? Can you see that the highest and best use is a function of the capacity of that land to be productive and to be used in some way that’s wise and well?” What if it’s actually adjacent to a new strip mall that has just been put in? The value increases even more. Well, that’s worth a lot more because it’s good development property. But what if those 10 acres were just on the outskirts of town in the direction in which the town is growing. That pretty much determines what its value is. So if someone were to tell me they have 10 acres, what’s it worth? I’d have to say, where’s it located? Say it’s out in the desert and it’s covered in sagebrush and some toxic waste. He said, “Yes, we do that we look at the current use of the property, but we also try to envision the highest and best use of that property.
He said to me one day, “Blake, you know how we value property when we do an appraisal?”Īnd I said, “Well, you measure the acreage and look at comparable properties or something.” It comes from a friend in the real estate business who taught me the phrase. I’ve used the phrase “highest and best use” here.