Corporate Planning Most corporate mission statements are worthless. They consist largely of pious platitudes such as: “We will hold ourselves to the highest standards of professionalism and ethical behaviour.” They often formulate necessities as objectives; for example, “to achieve sufficient profit.” This is like a person saying his mission is to breathe sufficiently. A mission statement should not commit a firm to what it must do in order to survive but to what it chooses to do in order to thrive. Nor should it be filled with operationally meaningless superlatives such as biggest, best, optimum, and maximum; for example, one company says it wants to “maximise its growth potential.” How in the world can a company determine whether it has attained its maximum growth potential or highest quality? To test for the appropriateness of an assertion in a mission statement, determine whether it can be disagreed with reasonably. If not, it should be excluded. Can you imagine any company disagreeing with the objective, “to provide the best value for the money”? If you can’t, it’s not worth saying. What characteristics should a mission statement have? First, it should contain a formulation of the firm’s objectives that enables progress toward them to be measured. To state objectives that cannot be used to evaluate performance is hypocrisy. Unless the adoption of a mission statement changes the behaviour of the firm that makes it, it has no value. The behaviour of a Mexican firm was profoundly affected by the following passage from its mission statement: To create a wholesome, varied, pluralistic, multi-class recreational area incorporating tourist facilities and permanent residences, and to produce locally as much of the goods and services required by the area as possible, so as to improve the standard of living and quality of life of its inhabitants. Second, a company’s mission statement should differentiate it from other companies. It should establish the individuality, if not the uniqueness, of the firm. A company that wants only what most other companies want for example, to manufacture products in an efficient manner, at costs that help yield adequate profits, wastes its time in formulating a mission statement. Individuality can be attained in many ways, including that in which a company’s business is identified. Third, a mission statement should define the business that the company wants to be in, not necessarily is in. However diverse its current business, it should try to find a unifying concept that enlarges its view of itself and brings it into focus. For example, a company that produces beverages, snacks, and baked goods and operates a variety of dinning, recreational, and entertainment facilities identified its business as “increasing the satisfaction people derive from use of their discretionary time.” This suggested completely new directions for its diversification and growth. The same was true of a company that said it was in the “sticking” business, enabling objects and materials to stick together. Fourth, a mission statement should be relevant to all the firm’s stakeholders. These include its customers, suppliers, the public, shareholders, and employees. The mission should state how the company intends to serve each of them; for example, one company committed itself “to providing all its employees with adequate and fair compensation, safe working conditions, stable employment, challenging work, opportunities for personal development, and a satisfying quality of working life.” It also wanted “to provide those who supply the material used in the business with continuing, if not expanding, sources of business, and with incentives to improve their products and services and their use through research and development.” Most mission statements address only shareholders and managers. Their most serious deficiency is their failure to motivate non-managerial employees. Without their commitment, a company’s mission has little chance of being fulfilled, whatever its managers and shareholders do. Finally, and of greatest importance, a mission statement should be exciting and inspiring. It should motivate all those whose participation in its pursuit is sought; for example, one Latin American company committed itself to being “an active force for economic and social development, fostering economic integration of Latin America and, within each country, collaboration between government, industry, labour and the public”. A mission should play the same role in a company that the Holy Grail did in the Crusades. It does not have to appear to be feasible; it only has to be desirable. If your firm has a mission statement, test it against these five criteria. If it fails to meet any of them, it should be redone. If your firm has no mission statement, one should be prepared and as participatively as possible. An organisation without a shared vision of what it wants to be is like a traveller without a destination. It has no way of determining whether it is making progress. Examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_statement http://www.missionstatements.com/ |