When was the last time you looked at your organization’s mission statement and core values?
Sometimes we are too busy managing our teams, meeting a deadline or putting out a fire. We are too busy being in the thick of it all that it’s hard to zoom out and see the forest for the trees.
In this period between Passover and Shavuot in which we are Counting the Omer (the biblical period of counting 49 days that correspond with the ancient barley and wheat harvests) a lot of us are refocusing our energies on our work before the summer slowdown. During this time, if we are feeling overwhelmed, let’s focus on a different kind of counting that is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Look at your organization’s mission statement and core values to help guide you to:
1. How we should prioritize
2. Which values will guide our decision making
3. What kind of work culture we want to create
While I invite you to get back to basics on a broader organizational level, the first step is to look at ourselves. What is your mission and core values? How do they animate you as you go through your day, prioritize and make decisions around how you spend your time?
Tonight, in Israel, we honor Holocaust Rememberance Day. One of the most prescient ways of commemorating the day is to elevate the wisdom survivors left for us. While Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor, philosopher and psychiatrist died in 1997, his writings continue to live on. This piece of wisdom from his book Man’s Search for Meaning reminds me to return to my core mission as I live each day. I invite you to consider how it may impact and embolden you. He writes:
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in
life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment
that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced,
nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task
is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.
As you return to the mission of your work, be sure to return to your own personal mission. Our broken world needs it.
Blessings for the journey,
Dasee
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