Mission Statements

Yes, I’m sure most of us have played around with the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator. Throw together a bunch of random buzzwords and you get what the majority of mission statements look like, an unintelligible mess that doesn’t seem to say anything. Fortunately things don’t have to be that way.

Instead, a well written mission statement can galvanize a group to a vision. A mission statement serves as the guiding light for a group or organization, helping current and future leaders to decide what short term strategies and goals to employ.

Essentially a mission statement should be a short paragraph that does three things:

• Summarizes what it is you and your team have set out to do, e.g., “To land a man on the moon”, “To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people”, “To fight against and prevent acts of hate and prejudice as well as to support diversity”…
• Describes how the vision will be reached, i.e., “By increasing spending on science research and science education”, “By improving the standard of living for our customers and serving communities around the world”, “By giving a collective and unified voice to the issues that are affecting Asian Pacific American Penn State students”.
• Lay down the guiding Core Values that reflect the corporate culture, e.g., “Client Value Creation, One Global Network, Integrity, Stewardship, Best People, Respect for the Individual”

So how do you actually write one of these “hip and cool” mission statements? The real challenge actually comes from understanding what the group actually needs. Leaders aren’t geniuses who magically (and unilaterally) create “the perfect vision”. Instead, by understanding the people and their environment, they can discover their true best mission.

The rest should come naturally. Just make sure to be clear and concise. It also doesn’t help to make it memorable. Disney’s “To make people happy” is definitely a broad and perhaps audacious mission, but I’m sure that helped to make Disney a house-hold name globally. And as always, spend the time to review and edit the mission statement with peers as well as mentors. A mission statement is something that should be “forever”. Write as though you will carve it onto huge stone tablets.

Finally, remember a group without a mission, is just like a ship without a rudder, at best you’re going nowhere fast. Until next time.

-Jason