Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Mission Statements made easy?

Robert Lucky wrote the following in a recent issue of IEEE Spectrum:
...there was a management meeting of the company's executives... Our chairman asked how many of us knew the corporate mission statement. I avoided his eyes, because I hadn't a clue. Neither, apparently, did anyone else. The angry chairman pointed out that the mission statement was prominently displayed in the lobby of our building, and we all passed by it every day.
This manager might have been able to take heart. There are, after all, two basic problems with mission statements:
  1. If the staff is already focused on what it's supposed to be doing, it doesn't need the mission statement;
  2. If the staff is not focused on what it's supposed to be doing, then there is a problem more fundamental than the need for a mission statement.
...and this guy may already have his people focused. :-)

What you want out of a mission statement is for everyone to work differently with it than they would without it. If you can't get that out of yours, then yours is crap. Write it over again. I mean it. Do it NOW. You need a mission statement that is
  • concrete, measurable, achievable, relevant, and memorable
  • consistent in its goals (as opposed to having both "good customer service" and "wrapping up service calls in less than three minutes")
  • driving day-to-day workplace values
With practice, you can come up with a passable mission statement on the fly -- and this is something entrepreneurs might have to do because of the likelihood of chance meetings. I am gonna write one right now, pulled out of the blue sky:
I am an educator whose life's work and passion is to grow a generation of competent entrepreneurs.
Not too shabby.

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posted by Ron @ 6:23 PM

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