Tuesday, January 15, 2008
A mission statement is a brief but at the same time broad declaration describing the overall purpose of the organization. The mission statement defines the organization's reason for existence in one or more paragraphs. The mission statement is a declaration of what an organization aspires to be.
A mission statement usually embodies the organization's philosophies, goals, ambitions and values. A mission statement can be focused on the organization's employees, customers and other stakeholders, as well as geographic locations, technology, etc.
A mission statement outlines what the organization is now and/or what it wants to become in the future. In respect of the future, for managers, the mission statement becomes a good benchmark against to which to evaluate performance. Very often, mission statements, identify critical business processes as well.
From the qualitative point of view, a good mission statement must be visionary, broad, realistic, motivational, easy to understand and as short as possible. Most of the mission statements that I've read are limited to a couple of paragraphs. However, there are some organizations whose mission statements can span on a whole page or two.
Is it mandatory to write a mission statement for your organization? There is no unequivocal answer to this question. However, most of the experts agree that it is a good idea to have a formal, written mission statement. Empirical data further strengthens this point of view. Over 60% of the Fortune 500 companies have written mission statements.
However, there is no use of a formal mission statement if it is just written and then thrown away on the shelf with a half inch dust on it. As mentioned above, a mission statement can serve as a good benchmark for managers. At the same time, a good mission statement distinguish your organization from others of your type.
In the next posts we will review, analyze and compare mission statements of several Fortune 500 companies. Further, we will delve into what it takes to write a good mission statement.
2 comments:
This is a very interesting article, I enjoyed it a lot!
"Over 60% of the Fortune 500 companies have written mission statements."
Where does this number come from?
Thank you for your comment and your interest in this blog.
I have been a long time hobbyist of reading, collecting and analyzing missions statements of different companies and the data comes from my own research.
With the advent of the Internet and the fact that virtually all companies have Internet presence today, it has become easier to do this type of research.
This post will have follow-up and I will be reviewing more mission statements.
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