Mission Statements 7

[bridgebuster]

Are mission states generally nothing more than BS?

Our office is preparing one (although we have a corporate mission statement. Each department met to review the draft and provide input; then the management will craft the final version.

I disagree with the concept of mission statements for a number of reasons:

Inherently: we desire to do our best; we are basically honest; we care about others. Telling us what we already know is an insult.

One company's mission statement could easily be another company's statement (I think they're all the same anyway: "We will be the best, we care about everyone, blah blah, blah...). Everyone wants to be the best; everyone cares. Mission statements don't tend to be original and usually contain nothing to differentiate one company from another. And do nothing to inspire people.

A company's statement can also be hypcritical when they speak of concern for their employees. The leave out the footnote that says "we're concerned about the professional growth and development of our staff only when they meet utilization goals otherwise, like any commodity, when it has no value to us we get rid of it."

I could ramble on and on. Am I being cynical?

 

[davidbeach]

I read somewhere a while back that someone's take on mission statements was that one of the not really beer beer companies had nailed the mission statement concept with "tastes great, less filling". It is easily debatable that they fail to meet the criteria of their mission statement, but it is short and to the point.

 

[jmw]

Like anything else, any other business or corporate initiative, for a Mission Statement to be meaningful everyone has to be "aligned" or "buy in" to it for it to work.
All too often management (or a management consultant, or even the PR guys etc. who do the new logo and letterheads and who define the font and typeface etc) Create the statement but do nothing more than put it on the website.
Its OK to produce a new logo and a "corporate identity" because you don't need people to understand or agree they'll write on whatever bit of stationary is put in front of them but getting everyone to see anything deeper in a mission statement than just a piece of flim flam takes effort.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[moltenmetal]

Have a look at

http://www.despair.com

. They have some wonderful de-motivational stuff. I particularly like the one with the group of hands together, ready to do a "Whoa, team!", with the text: "Meetings: none of us is as dumb as ALL of us!"

The Dilbert guy has it completely correct: this mission statement crap is management gobbledygook. Take any of it to heart and you should have your head examined. True, it does divert the expensive "overhead" staff from finding new ways to screw the employees, so that may be of some benefit.

A great many people have unrealistic expectations of businesses, which can lead to disillusionment and personal loss. Businesses are algorithms which maximize profit and retained earnings for their shareholders, and that's all the mission statement they need- aside from perhaps adding the words "short term" or "long term" to qualify what kind of maximization the management is interested in at the moment. Want to know which one they're interested in? Check out how they're compensated and you'll figure that one out double quick. If businesses do anything else, they do it by accident, by negligence, or as a parasitic load to their true mission statement. True, they cannot meet their objectives without customers or employees, so they need to provide something to each- often to one at the other's expense. But they will go out of business if they don't meet their true mission statement.

 

[ScottyUK]

If anyone needed greater proof of how worthless these statements truly are, the dear departed Enron (departed with my money... bastards) had the following:

Motto: "Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence."

Its "Vision and Values" mission statement declared, "We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves....We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don't belong here."

Shame the top executives lived the exact opposite of what they preached. Hopefully they will all die of some hideous plague.

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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[0707]

Mission statements come from quality management and the intention is to show a good image of the organization and commitment of the leadership. The intention is to revel that behind a selling of a product there is a policy, which pretends to involve workers leadership clients and the general public. In a certain way is a kind of blah, blah, blah.

Cheers

Luis