Mission Statements

In a recent post, DHH blasts the crap out of mission statements.  As he puts it - "They almost always contain neither a real mission or any interesting statements." 

There was a time when you could not get away from having to publish a mission statement.  And, it usually had to somehow connect to your strategic plan - or everyone would get upset.  This dogma was always an issue for me;  how do you take a series of colourless distant statements, designed to sooth a broad number of constituents,  and use that to inform a deliberate set of actions and policies? Even if your mission statement is close to your heart and crafted like a fine haiku, it can still fail to be strategically useful, or worse hold you back.

I think a good company mission is cool,  and it does help to think about a company as a mission from time to time - especially if you are actually mission driven. But not every company needs to be.  I certainly don’t think we need missions that state the obvious or exist to simply broadcast virtues we should all have anyway.

So what is a mission statement for then?  Is it your promise, your reason for existing, a set of goals? Honestly,  I have not found a good answer. But what I do know is that if you are going to craft a mission statement, it’s important to first be clear about how you intend to use it. Otherwise the promises and aspirations often threaded into the wording can become a straitjacket.

Still Life with Apples and Pears is a Post-Impressionist oil on canvas painting created by Paul Cézanne from 1891 to 1892. It is a study in perspective, but the apples and pears apparently don’t symbolize anything.