Understanding the Ashridge Mission Model

Female interviewer: The Ashridge Mission Model provides organisations with a framework for developing their own sense of mission. The model was first designed by Andrew Campbell and Sally Young in the late 1990s, based on interviews they conducted with 53 leading organisations about their own missions, visions and values.

Here we speak to Andrew Campbell about the Ashridge Mission Model and how it can help organisations develop a meaningful sense of mission. I began by asking Andrew what his interviews with these leading organisations revealed.

Andrew Campbell: I found myself sitting down with managers of companies and saying tell me about the company mission and they would say ‘Let me tell you about the company.’ And at that point their whole persona would be enthused with energy and, I particularly remember the Marks and Spencer’s person actually sort of leaping up from his seat and dashing out the door and then back a minute later with a plastic envelope with a shirt inside it and on the front of the plastic envelope was the words ‘perfect sample’ and he said ‘This is what Marks and Spencer is all about’ and explained that they worked with a supplier to produce two perfect samples and the supplier keeps one and they keep one and then if there is any argy-bargy about whether the product that has been delivered is up to standard or not, they compare it with the perfect sample and if it is not as good as the perfect sample, they send it back and the supplier can check their perfect sample and, you know, there is no argument. And he said, you know, that’s absolutely at the heart of what Marks and Spencer is all about.

Following that bit of research I found lots of other situations which were very similar where people were really talking about what I ended up describing as behaviour standards, so when you ask people to talk about why they were excited about their organisation, what they described was behaviour standards, things that the organisation did that made them feel proud and seemed to have meaning within the organisation.

What I found myself then doing was often going back to those people because I was very surprised and when I was writing up my interview notes I was saying ‘Well, this doesn’t really make sense, what is this all about?’ and going back to these people and saying ‘Why are you so excited about this, you know, why is this important to you and what has this got to do with the company’s mission?’ And I would usually get as the first response something about individual’s personal values. And, you know, I would then keep on pressing and say ‘Yes, but you know, hang on a second, that’s about you but what about the company’s mission?’ I would often get, ‘Well, yes of course it is important but also for the company because it helps us be successful, i.e. it is a cornerstone of our strategy which enables us to compete in the marketplace.’ And, you know, at that point I was getting people saying something which I would recognise as mission or purpose, but only after having been through quite a long journey about what was really important to them.

The conclusion you take away from all of that is when you are trying to create commitment to something, which is what the whole purpose of doing mission work is, you have to recognise the long chain of connection and that the real connection ends up being with some behaviour standard that turns people on and makes them feel proud of themselves.

Female interviewer: So I suppose it is about taking something that motivates individuals and making that relevant to a far reaching wider strategy for the whole organisation?

Andrew Campbell: Well again, when you are trying to design a mission statement or develop a mission statement or develop a mission that will engender or gain passionate support from the employees and other stakeholders, then clearly one often starts from the other end of the telescope. So you often start with, you know, what my company is trying to do is make very good cars, and then you work down to, well, okay, what in terms of behaviour standards can I manage into my organisation that will turn on customers and employees and suppliers in a symbolic way? And then you back up, and how can I then incorporate those into the words I use around the company mission?

So it is a process of, you know, what you are trying to do, which is the easy bit, but how do you link that to the sense of pride that people can feel as a result of their association with your company or organisation?

Female interviewer: In terms of the Ashridge Mission Model, what is the hallmark of an effective mission?

Andrew Campbell: It is the degree to which the behaviour standards link with some far reaching or enlightened purpose and then there are two ways that they connect. One is through values, so we do something because it is the right thing to do, which is the kind of moral logic for doing things. And then the other logic is the commercial logic for doing things, which is we do this because it makes us more successful. And what you are trying to do is to get a common connection because you have to do things that are commercially sensible but you also have to do things that are morally uplifting.

For example, if you take the perfect sample’s thought, then that is really quite exciting for somebody who believes in high standards and quality, but it is also a mechanism for making sure that the products you put in a shop are a very good quality and that will attract customers and that makes your organisation successful.

So what you are trying to do is to get that link between, you know, we want to be the biggest clothing retailer in the world to how do we make our people feel proud and how do we put products in front of customers that are, you know, better than our rivals.

Female interviewer: And in terms of the difference between mission and vision, this can sometimes seem quite unclear or confusing. What is the distinction between mission and vision?

Andrew Campbell: I think to some degree the difference is reasonably easy to articulate. So a vision is a time focused picture, so you say ‘Well, what are we going to be at a certain point in time?’ A mission is more about the rules of which we travel by and the reason for travelling at all. So, you know, having a man walking on the moon by 1970 or something is a vision, but, you know, exploring space for the betterment of mankind is more of a mission.

Mission is more driven from a concept of the purpose and then the sense of mission is trickling down that concept of purpose ultimately through to behaviour standards which have become symbolic in people’s minds.

Female interviewer: So we have heard from Andrew that behaviour standards, the things an organisation does that make its people proud and engender their passionate support, can have a profound impact on the organisation sense of mission.

Andrew then went on to tell me about a company that successfully made a change to its behaviour standards in order to achieve a wider objective.

Andrew Campbell: The company was wanting to increase the attention that employees were giving to safety. There were lots of people who were not very safety conscious and it is very easy for those people to rubbish your efforts and to undermine it. So what this company did was it searched around for a behaviour standard that had strong logic but that would be easy to manage and what they ended up choosing was parking your car in reverse. The logic to parking in reverse is most accidents happen when people are reversing out of their parking space and so you can reduce that a lot by getting people to park in reverse and then go out forwards. And you can then imagine the impact it had on the organisation, people arriving at work thinking about safety because, you know, why did somebody make this plan, because it is safer. And it is very difficult for anyone to fight against that logic and so, you know, by doing that they then drove into the organisation the notion that safety was worth thinking about and that by changing your behaviour you could contribute to having a safer environment.

Female interviewer: So sometimes it can be just a small tweak to the way things are done that can start people changing the way that they think?

Andrew Campbell: That’s the key, because of course otherwise it is much too difficult a thing to manage. If you look at the traditional text, what they say is, you know, put together your vision, mission and values and then get all the senior executives to walk the talk and grade every employee on their ability to live up to the values. You need to go at it a little bit more subtly.

Female interviewer: What advice would you give to organisations that want to or need to transform their mission statement from a piece of paper into something that actually has meaning?

Andrew Campbell: I don’t think if you start with words on paper you are starting at the right end. My view would be, you know, focus on something that you can, a behaviour standard that you can manage, that you can actually manage into the organisation, recognising that managing anything into an organisation is extremely difficult, so you have to be quite clever in the one you choose. And then, once you have done that, you know, then rewrite your values after you have made some progress. So, yes, people obviously have a desire to change their organisation, they will say ‘Well, we want to be more customer oriented’ or ‘We want to be more quality conscious’ or those sort of things, but the starting point in my view is not writing stuff down on paper, the starting point is thinking about behaviour standards and their connection with purpose and values and strategy.

Hence the Ashridge Mission Model, which has purpose at the top and behaviour standards at the bottom.