Another item concerned the value of education. We wanted our children to work in school and get as much education as possible, and not take shortcuts to simply get grades and diplomas. So we read together as a family. We organized our home so that our children had a time and a place to do homework. We became interested in what our children were learning in school, and we gave them opportunities to teach us what they were learning. We focused primarily on learning, not grades, and we hardly ever had to encourage the children to do their homework. We rarely saw a grade lower than an A minus.
Over the years, the focus on these and other “ends in mind” made a powerful difference in our family direction and in our family culture. But then, starting about twenty years ago, we developed a whole new level of family unity and synergy. At that time we started developing and organizing the 7 Habits material. We began to realize that successful organizations of all kinds have mission statements. Many were sincere and became the major force in all decision-making; many were written only for public relations purposes. We began to realize what more recent research clearly shows: that the sincere kind of statement is an absolutely critical ingredient of high-performance organizations—fundamental not only to the productivity and success of the organization but also to the satisfaction and happiness of the people who work in it.3
We realized that even though most families begin with a sacred marriage ceremony (which represents a kind of “beginning with the end in mind”), for the most part, families don’t have the kind of mission statement so critical to organizational success. Yet family is the most important, fundamental organization in the world, the literal building block of society. No civilization has ever survived its breakup. No other institution can fulfill its essential purpose. No other institution has had its impact for good or ill. Nevertheless, in most families members do not have a deep sense of shared vision around its essential meaning and purpose. They have not paid the price to develop a shared vision and value system, which is the essence of the character and culture of the family.
So we became convinced that we needed to develop a “family mission statement.” We had to create a vision of what we wanted our family to be like, what we would live by, what we would stand for—even die for. It would be a vision that was shared and owned by all family members, not just the two of us.
So we began the process of creating it. We met as a family once a week to talk about it. We had different fun activities for the children that helped them tap into their four human gifts and get their ideas out on the table. We brainstormed together. Between family meetings we privately pondered these things. We sometimes discussed them one-on-one or at dinner. One night as we met, we asked the children, “How do you think we could be better parents? In what ways can we improve?” (After twenty minutes of being bombarded by the ideas and suggestions that flowed freely, we said, “Okay, we think we get the idea!”)
Gradually, we began to address a whole range of deeper issues. We asked family members:
What kind of family do we really want to be?
What kind of home would you like to invite your friends to?
What embarrasses you about our family?
What makes you feel comfortable here?
What makes you want to come home?
What makes you feel drawn to us as your parents so that you are open to our influence?
What makes us feel open to your influence?
What do we want to be remembered by?
We asked all the children who could write to make their own list of things that were important to them. They brought back their ideas the following week, and we had an open discussion about why these traits were so important or desirable. Eventually, all of the children wrote their own mission statements about what they felt was important and why. Together we read and discussed each one. Each was thoughtful and special. We had to smile when we read Sean’s. Coming from the teenage football frame of mind he held at the time, it read: “We’re one heck of a family, and we kick butt!” Not too refined—but to the point.
It took us about eight months to develop our mission statement. Everyone participated. Even my mother was involved. Today we have grandchildren who have also become a part of it, so there are now four generations involved in our family mission statement.
A Destination and a Compass
It is almost impossible to communicate the impact that creating a family mission statement has had on our family—both directly and indirectly. Perhaps the best way to describe it is in terms of the airplane metaphor: Creating a family mission statement has given us a destination and a compass.
The mission statement itself has given us a clear, shared vision of the destination where we as a family want to go. It has been a guide to our family now for a decade and a half. We have it up on a wall in our family room. We look at it often and ask ourselves, “How well are we living up to what we have decided to be and to do? Is our home really a place where the sounds of love are found? Are we being cynical and critical? Do we use cutting humor? Do we walk out on each other and not communicate? Are we giving back or only taking?”
As we compare our actions to this statement, we get feedback that tells us when we’re off course. In fact, it is this statement—this sense of destination—that makes feedback meaningful. Without it, feedback becomes confusing and counterproductive. There’s no way to tell if it’s relevant. There’s nothing to measure it against. But a clear sense of shared vision and values enables us to evaluate feedback and use it to make continual course corrections so that we can eventually arrive at our destination.
Our sense of destination also allows us to better understand our present situation and to realize that the ends and means are inseparable; in other words, the destination and the manner of traveling are interwoven. When the destination represents a certain quality of family life and of love in the relationship, is it possible to imagine any separation between that destination and the manner of traveling to get there? In reality, the ends and the means—the destination and the journey—are the same.
Certainly our family is not free from problems, but much of the time, at least, family members really do feel that our home is a place of faith, order, truth, love, happiness, and relaxation. We try to act in ways that are responsibly independent and effectively interdependent. We attempt to serve worthy purposes in society. And we’re grateful to see these things manifest in the lives of our married children who now have families of their own and have developed their own mission statements.
The process of creating our mission statement has also enabled us to turn our four unique human gifts into a “compass” to help keep us on track. We had been aware of some of the principles we wanted to live by—principles such as those mentioned in the Emotional Bank Account deposits in Habit 1—but as we came together and talked about them as a family, we reached a whole new level of understanding and commitment to live by them.
As we interacted, self-awareness became family awareness—our ability to see ourselves as a family. Conscience became family conscience—the unity of the shared moral nature of everyone in the family and the clarity that came from discussing these things together. Imagination became creative synergy as we hammered out the issues and came to something everyone could agree on. And independent will became interdependent will or social will as we all worked together to make it happen.
This was one of the most exciting things that developed out of our family mission statement work—the creation of this social will, this sense of “we.” This is our decision, our determination. This is what we have decided we are going to be and to do. It represented the collective awareness, the collective conscience, and the collective imagination that came together synergistically to produce this collective commitment, this collective promise or expression of collective will.
Nothing is more bonding and more binding than for everybody to be involved in the process of synergistic interaction and communication until this social will is fashioned and formed. When you create a social will, you produce something that is much more synergistic than just a collection of individual wills. And this gives an entirely new dimension to the concept of synergy. Synergy is producing not just a third alternative solution but a third alternative spirit—the spirit of the family.