Mission statements

Abstract

Most corporate mission statements are worthless. They consist largely of pious platitudes such as: “We will hold ourselves to the highest standards of professionalism and ethical behavior.” They often formulate necessities as objectives; for example, “to achieve sufficient profit.” This is like a person saying his mission is to breathe sufficiently. A mission statement should not commit a firm to what it must do in order to survive, but to what it chooses to do in order to thrive. Nor should it be filled with operationally meaningless superlatives, such as biggest, best, optimum, and maximum; for example, one company says it wants to “maximize its growth potential,” another “to provide products of the highest quality.” How in the world can a company determine whether it has attained its maximum growth potential or highest quality?