Do You Really Need a Mission Statement?
We have all been told countless times that a “mission statement” is critical to the success of an
organization. I am sure you have heard that “if you don’t know where you are going, any
direction will do.” However, the evidence and research shows that many successful companies
do not have either a business plan or a mission statement. How many times have you seen a
mission statement that said “We want to be the best” or “We highly value our employees”? We
tend to just take these for granted. They are generic and vanilla statements and most employees
will simply ignore them. In fact, in even the best companies, the mission statement (if it exists)
is virtually unknown by most employees if not most of management. I have visited dozens of
companies wherein most of management could not begin to tell you what their mission or vision
is for their organization.
In my seminars on strategic planning, I have conducted numerous debates between proponents of
mission statements and opponents. The score is somewhat tied at about 50-50. Many times the
judges select the arguments of the proponents but equally as often the opponents win the debate?
Why? How can so much wisdom exhorting the power of a mission statement be wrong? When
one adds the time to develop such statements in planning workshops attended by senior
executives, there seems to be even less justification for spending precious hours and resources on
these statements. My partner and I have developed a more balanced view of the value of such
statements and when and how they should be developed and deployed.
Let’s look at three possibilities. 1.) The mission statement is in the head of the founder. 2.) The
mission statement is boring and unmemorable. 3.) The mission statement is inspiring and
motivating.
In the first case, you probably do not need a mission statement as long as the founder or leader is
at the helm of the organization. However, what if every employee also had a “personal” mission
statement for their role in the organization? What if their mission statement aligned with the
founders’ mission statement? Every employee coming to work each day would have a purpose
linked to the overall purpose of the organization but inspired by their own goals and related to
what they personally wanted to accomplish. Would you mind having a workforce filled with
such people. Then why keep the founders statement or vision a secret? Why not expand the
entire concept of creating a vision to a vision and mission for each employee in the organization?
The mission statement is boring and unmemorable. This second situation applies to about 80
percent of the missions that I have seen. Cookie cutter statements are not going to inspire
anyone. Worse, they fail to provide any strategic direction. What is missing in these statements
is imagination. Think of the imagination that inspired the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland,
Avatar, the IPOD, the Moon Landing, and Facebook. I am not talking about “Pie in the Sky”
type thinking and planning. I am talking about words, visions and missions that inspire and
excite us. Adventures and goals that take us out of our mundane everyday lives and help make
us part of something bigger than ourselves. We all want to be part of something great, something
memorable. Whether it is simply by supporting our sports team, developing a new innovative
product or joining the church choir, we need to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
However, we must believe that this “bigger’ thing is going somewhere exciting or has the
potential to be a winner. It has to be bigger than we are. It has to embody deep seated hopes and
dreams that are inherent in every human being. As Kelly Cutrone , the writer and fashion
publicist has said in her new book: “Normal Gets You Nowhere.” Normal is average. Average
is middle of the road. Do you aspire to be an average company with average employees? If so,
you will probably not survive long in today’s marketplace.
The third possibility is what we want to create. A mission statement that is inspiring, memorable
and actionable. We want a mission statement that will embody the hopes and dreams of the
founder and the employees that are hired by the organization. Consider some of the following
statements:
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Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year
mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly
go where no man has gone before.
I believe this nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of
landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
Henry Ford's mission was a simple, inexpensive vehicle affordable by ALL!
Wal-Mart "To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people."
Mary Kay Cosmetics "To give unlimited opportunity to women."
3M "To solve unsolved problems innovatively"
Each of these statements is inspiring and memorable. But even better, each of these statements
invites you to take part in some endeavor that is clearly exciting and worthwhile. However,
before you start to think about developing or changing your organizations mission statement you
need to ask yourself a few questions.
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Are you inspired by your company mission or vision? Why not?
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What would it take for you to be more inspired?
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Would putting time and energy into developing an inspiring mission statement help you
and your employees have more energy and focus? Why or why not?
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Do you self-inspire? Do you have your own personal vision and mission? Why not?
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Do you have the imagination to create a great mission statement for your organization?
Too many organizations have a myth of innovation and creativity when in reality they have
become moribund and bureaucratic. They lack the ability to think out of the box, because the
entire organization structure is one great matrix of boxes and chimneys and silos. From the day
an employee is hired, they are put into a box by their job description, their title, their department
and the policies and procedures that govern everyday organization life in their company. Is it
any wonder that when a mission statement is created, it is lackluster and vanilla? It is difficult if
not impossible to be creative and imaginative and think out of a box when your entire daily
existence is to be part of and fit into one large box. Thus, many organizations need help to be
creative and imaginative. Asking the typical manager and employee to create an innovative and
inspiring mission statement is like asking the fox to take good care of the hen house. “It ain’t a
gonna happen.”
Let’s look briefly to see how imagination is related to innovation and how innovation is related
to value. The following picture borrows from several other models but is unique in that we
believe imagination must come before innovation and that imagination is the spark that ignites
everything.
We can explain this model using a fairly well documented example. The Wright Brothers
developed a machine that would fly both guided by and carrying a human being. Rebecca Lewis
“Tar Heel Junior Historian, fall, 2003) writes that Orville and Wilbur studied birds and dreamed
of flying. “They made that dream a reality with hard work and experimentation but imagination
created the idea and provided the inspiration.” Following their dreams, they created several
prototypes and tested numerous theories and possibilities. They encountered many problems
along the way and found they had to rewrite several aeronautical theories that were plain wrong.
Once they developed a machine that would fly, they continued to innovate the machine until it
was reliable. John Foster in his blog “Is that innovation or invention” notes that the Wright
Brothers did not invent the airplane but they continued to innovate and improve the flight
controls and technology until flying was fairly reliable. The rest of the model is fairly selfexplanatory. Most of us would agree that flying provides both products and services that
revolutionized the world. In this there was value and benefits for humanity.
Well, you have some tips and ideas here. If you were expecting a formula for a great mission
statement, we are sorry. There is no such formula. A great mission statement comes from
passion, imagination, focus and to some extent failure and experimentation. It is an iterative
process. My partner and I use the PDCA cycle as a means of summarizing this. P is for Play. D
is for Design. C is for Create and A is for Activate. It is a cycle that is never ending and always
being refined and improved. Apply this cycle to your mission statement and see where it takes
you. Start with play. Let your imagination go. What is your mission? What is your vision?
Where do your dreams and passions lie? Can you fulfill them? You can if we you are willing to
endlessly cycle your activities.
Dr. John Persico Jr.
The Minnesota Consulting Alliance