“It is our mission to credibly facilitate future-proff initiatives so that we may endeavor 100% customer satisfaction”
Liked? Built it using http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_feb2001/ManualMSG.htm through the following formula:
Select Your Own Mission Statement Components
(Mission Statement = Opener + Adverb + Verb + Adjective + Noun + Conjunctive + Closer)
Mission statements, Vision, corporate values, they are all great. Pity that only 1 in 100 companies put them to use (anyone knows any company that does? If so, please share!).
So, more or less 49.5% of companies that have a mission statement fail because it is nothing than a collection of buzzwords that you cannot afford to leave out of a statement. The other 49.5% have meaningful content but focus on the means (such as “we will satisfy our customers with top products and services” etc).
The rest of 1% kind of get lucky or have enough discipline to make an action call (not to say that I am 100% against it, I do believe that Collins/Porras “Building your Company Vision” (http://hbr.org/1996/09/building-your-companys-vision/ar/1) is a must read)
But it can be simpler
The mission statement of a company should be only one, a simple word: TO BE THE BEST! You have to tell everyone that THE GOAL IS TO BE THE BEST AND WE WILL NOT ACCEPT ANYTHING LESS. Why?
- Because it’s simple (simple is beautiful!)
- Because it is about being the best salesman, the best cost-cutter and the culture that we want
- Because nothing motivates more employees than striving to be the best
- Because everyone knows what to do and what is expected from them
- Because being the best leads to better bottom line results
I’ve put that in use once. Actually, it all started when I was finishing my MBA and decided to go back to HR. An amazing HR professional made me an offer, I asked “Why working with you?”. She said “Because I want to have the best HR in the market and need people who want to build that with me“. (…) (I was speechless)
I had several other offers, but couldn’t resist the offer. One thing is “to be responsible for a Center o Expertise” the other “is to help a company implement HR”, but “I want to be the best and won’t settle for less” is a different ball game!
Soon after I overdrived the statement and started using myself. I started to obsessively try to find people who strives to be the best and settle for nothing less. And the most powerful part that I notice when interviewing is: even those professionals who don’t have this ambition built-in, got extremely motivated for joining a company when they see a bold goal leaders truly motivated to achieve it!
(it is all about passion)
Simple? Simplistic? Sounds naive, but isn’t a powerful call to action?
(more?)
If you like teambuilding, you better stop reading
