Who among us has not had the horrible experience of an corporate offsite to build teamwork and to craft a mission statement? The offsite usually went like this:
Day 1: Teambuilding. Selection of cross-functional teams so that, God help us, engineering has to work with sales. A day of exercises such as, “Each of you will come up to the front of the group, turn your back to the group, close your eyes, and fall backwards into the arms of your colleagues. This will teach you to trust your fellow employees.”
Day 2: Crafting the mission statement. A hot, crowded room with easels of white paper and a facilitator who knows nothing about your business. Everyone who is a director level and above in the company is there—that’s sixty people. You each figure you get one word, so at the end of the day, you have a sixty word mission statement like this:
The mission of Wendy’s is to deliver superior quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership, innovation, and partnerships.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Wendy’s, but I’ve never thought I was participating in “leadership, innovation, and partnerships” when I ordered a hamburger there. The root cause of mission statement-itis is that most organizations are run by people who have either gotten an MBA or worked for McKinsey—or both.
I give up trying to get people to create short, different, and meaningful mission statements, so go ahead and spend the $25,000 for the offsite, facilitator, and consultants to create one. However, you should also create a mantra for your organization. A mantra is three or four words long. Tops. Its purpose is to help employees truly understand why the organization exists.
If I were the CEO of Wendy’s, I would establish a corporate mantra of “healthy fast food.” End of story. Here are more examples of corporate mantras to inspire you:
Federal Express: “Peace of mind”
Nike: “Authentic athletic performance”
Target: “Democratize design”
Mary Kay: “Enriching women’s lives”
The ultimate test for a mantra (or mission statement) is if your telephone operators (Trixie and Biff) can tell you what it is. If they can, then you’re onto something meaningful and memorable. If they can’t, then, well, it sucks.
If you still insist on doing a mission statement, then at least let me help you save a lot of time and money. Just go to the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator. There, without a consultant, facilitator, and offsite, you can get the mission statement of your dreams.
Written at United Airlines, seat 4E, SFO to HNL
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3 comments
Griffin
January 24, 2007 at 3:38 am
Wow…this is something to think about especially when you have Problogger.net suggest that a blogger create a mission statement for their blogs. Thanks for the morsel to chew on!
David Taylor(from Where'sTheSausage)
January 25, 2007 at 6:36 am
Love it, especially the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator.
Its amazing how many companies still seemed set on spending time and money on coming up with something totally generic. Much better if you are going to do this is getting one off the shelf. Or using Dilbert.
Jim
January 25, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Your thoughts on the much abused mission statement reflect my own. A sentiment I’ve put into one of my ebooks.
Interestingly in all the mission statements I’ve seen (that’s lots) you could swap them between companies and customers wouldn’t know the difference!
Jim
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