MISSION IMPOSSIBLE (If you have the wrong mission statement)

A mission statement is a short, succinct definition of a company’s purpose. Does your company have one? Most I’ve read are what I call “psychobabble.” They’re vague, unspecific, and generally too long. Employees usually don’t read them and if they do, they probably don’t understand them.

In my opinion, a good mission statement is the rudder that steers the ship. Without it, a company has no focus and drifts aimlessly without a clear purpose or goal.

When I owned Peachtree Movers, our mission statement was “To become the most user-friendly office mover in Atlanta.” On an irregular but consistent basis I used to randomly go up to our mover/helpers, drivers, supervisors, bookkeeper, salesmen, and customer service employees and ask, “What is our mission statement?” Because I asked them so many times, they finally learned it and could regurgitate it in their own words. When they repeated it, my follow-up question was, “Well, do you have any ways or ideas to make it easier for our customers to do business with us?” You would be amazed at the responses! It was one of our supervisors, the now famous Dexter Cook, whom I wrote about in my cross-training article last week, who came up with a brilliant and safe technique for moving flat files (aka blueprint file cabinets) without having to remove the cabinets’ contents—a huge timesaver for customers!

Our bookkeeper, Lou Manos, said we could become more user-friendly to our large house accounts like Holiday Inn, Sun Trust, and Rockwell, if we sent them their invoices immediately instead sequencing them in the order in which they occurred. 

One of our mover/helpers came up with the ingenious idea of securing floor protection to the carpet by pulling another mover around by his legs. (see the picture below).

By having a simple and clearly understandable mission statement, we got terrific ideas from our employees on a regular basis. If you have a mission statement, how’s it working for you? After reading this article, is time for you to consider changing it?

Be sure to join our Group at https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/12060567 For more information on our online office moving training, please visit https://www.officemoves.com/training/index.html or call Ed Katz at 404.358.2172.