Why Most Mission Statements Make Us Cringe

Let’s face it – most company mission and vision statements suck. We’ve become adapted to reading them and immediately dismissing them as corporate claptrap.

They are generally grandiose, cliché-riddled and self-congratulatory. Most people couldn’t even tell you the mission or vision of their company. And for those companies that make an efforts of communicating ‘their latest and shiniest’ mission and vision, they can be sure it will get mocked by many. The fact is, more often than not they make people cringe.

So does this mean we shouldn’t bother with them? Well, no – but it means we should take a hard look at how we go about writing them. If we can’t find a way of making sure they don’t get lost in the noise of corporate babble that just gets tuned out and ignored, what’s the point?

I’ve written already about the difference between mission and vision statements – including examples of some of the best and worst I’ve come across, so I won’t go over it again. Instead, here’s a few pointers on getting it right.

Avoid meaninglessness

Every word must convey to your audience (public and employees) something essential about your business. There is no room for bloat, superlatives or cliché. Worse still is to state the obvious – why would a company ever feel the need to aspire to be anything other than “the best”? Take a look at this terrible mission statement from McDonalds:

“Our worldwide operations are aligned around a global strategy called the Plan to Win, which center on an exceptional customer experience – People, Products, Place, Price and Promotion. We are committed to continuously improving our operations and enhancing our customers’ experience”.

Did they think that unless they used one of their most valuable pieces of self-promotional space (their mission statement) to tell us they are committed to continuously improving, we would assume they are intending on sitting on their laurels, or even lowering their standards?

(As an aside, a mission statement isn’t really the place to tell us the name of your global strategy, either – it would be far better to communicate something about what your strategy actually is, rather than what it’s called!).

Write between the lines

You only have a certain amount of words to get your message across without losing your audience’s attention. The best statements will wring the maximum amount of meaning and expression out of those words. Consider Google’s “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Obviously if this was most companies other than Google they might expect a bit of stick for being over-ambitious. But the statement successfully conveys the vast scale of their task, and makes us think about the potential benefits of achieving it. As well as that, the words tell us in a straightforward manner what they are actually doing.

Don’t be boring

You’re fighting for people’s attention. When people begin reading a mission statement, they have low expectations. They’re expecting a piece of corporate cliché apparently provided purely because the company knows it ought to have one. Most importantly, keep it short. I challenge anyone to read through Avon’s 250 word epic without falling asleep.

Make it possible

This has two meanings – don’t promise the impossible (unless you are Google) and more importantly, make sure that employees can apply the simple statement to every part of their work. You should be able to look at every part of your operation and see your mission or vision statement brought to life in front of your eyes. And if employees are looking for guidance when putting together the strategies they are responsible for, they should be able to look to the mission statement for a clear indication of the direction they should be heading in. This is why I like eBay’s: ”At eBay, our mission is to provide a global online marketplace where practically anyone can trade practically anything, enabling economic opportunity around the world.”

Show how you make the world a better place

Definitely notice how I said “show” don’t “tell” – if you’ve seen the new HBO comedy Silicon Valley, you’ll probably have laughed at the running joke that every tech startup claims their product will “make the world a better place” without any indication of how they will do this. A good and very simple example of how to do this right is Walmart’s “To help people save money so they can live better”. Anyone who reads this can immediately see how it fits into Walmart’s business strategy.

Or, if you can’t be bothered – then you might as well use this convenient Mission Statement Generator – the first one it came up with for me was “It is our mission to continue to conveniently create outcome-driven content and globally engineer diverse sources while encouraging personal growth.” Depressingly close to a lot of real ones I see!

As always, let me know your views on mission and vision statements? Any examples of good or particularly bad ones? Please share your views in the comments below...

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I really appreciate that you are reading my post. Here, at LinkedIn, I regularly write about management and technology issues and trends. If you would like to read my regular posts then please click 'Follow' (at the top of the page) and send me a LinkedIn invite. And, of course, feel free to also connect via Twitter, Facebook and The Advanced Performance Institute.Here are some other related posts I have written:

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About : Bernard Marr is a globally recognized expert in strategy, performance management, analytics, KPIs and big data. He helps companies manage, measure and improve performance.

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