HERE’S A MISSION: STOP WASTING TIME ON SILLY STATEMENTS
July 7, 2009 by Jason
Filed under CONTRIBUTORS BLOG, JAY'S MARKETING VIEWS
I don’t tend to get stumped by very much – I mean, stumped to the point where I just don’t know how to respond, but a few days ago that very thing happened. I was on a meeting with a company about a re-branding initiative, and four individuals on the client side were united in wanted to kick off our discussion of their brand by analyzing their mission statement.
Starting a re-branding effort with a mission statement is like building a car and being more concerned with the color of the fuzzy dice than with the body, the engine or the fuel efficiency. It’s a cute accessory, but it’s hardly going to get the car built or move it forward.
Companies often put way more emphasis on crafting their mission statements than the practice deserves. In fact, fine, I’ll say it – mission statements are pretty much pointless crap. At least, I’ve never seen one that makes sense to me or rings even remotely true. Most of them don’t say anything meaningful at all, and just use standard marketing buzzwords that could just as easily relate to any company.
Take this charmer from Aflac:
To combine aggressive strategic marketing with quality products and services at competitive prices to provide the best insurance value for consumers.
Are they serious? What’s the point of that? All they did was take a bunch of the most important words in marketing (or what are often considered to be the most important words): “quality,” “products,” “services,” “prices,” “best,” and “value” and string them together in a sentence. It doesn’t say anything useful to anybody, doesn’t make any bit of difference to how they do business, and, if the word “insurance” were removed, could just as easily apply to any other company regardless of size or industry. Plus – and I don’t want to argue semantics, but I will – that’s not really their mission anyway. Corporations aren’t that altruistic. Their mission is to make money. Look at this mission statement for AGCO, a leading agricultural equipment manufacturer:
Profitable growth through superior customer service, innovation, quality and commitment.
At least that’s honest! Their mission is to achieve profitable growth. Everything after the word “growth” simply states the means by which they plan to generate that growth.
But being honest doesn’t mean it provides value. Okay, so AGCO wants to generate profitable growth. What company doesn’t? And fine, they’ll provide superior customer service, innovation, quality, and commitment. Does any legitimate company go into business with the intention of providing sub-par customer service, out-of-date ideas, useless crap, and indifference? Not likely.
The standard argument in favor of mission statements is that without them, brands are left without goals to strive for. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s no question that goals are an absolute necessity for a company to be successful, and those goals need to be stated outright, and whenever possible, numerical in nature. Numerical goals are the best way to monitor progress and know whether or not the efforts that are being taken are actually working.
But “mission statements” as they are typically used don’t achieve that. The “mission” of a company is to make money, improve shareholder wealth, increase market share, etc. It’s not to provide the highest quality product, new technological advancements, exceptional customer service, etc. – those are the methods that the company will take to achieve their mission (of generating a profit). And even those methods of achieving a mission are weak because they’re intangible and vague – “exceptional customer service” doesn’t say anything useful that a company can measure success by. Is exceptional customer service achieved with an 80% consumer satisfaction rating? Does it need to be 90% to reach the goal? To reach a goal, there needs to be a definitive line in the sand: “We want to improve our customer satisfaction rating by 10% over last quater” is a definitive goal. Vague generalities never help any company achieve very much.
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It is a waste of time if the company make a statement which will forget in 1 second.
A mission statement is not just a group of pretty words and intentions that sounds nice.
The mission statement helps the company to think about what they are and want to be and get, and what they need to achieve their goals. With a good mission statement the company can think how much they want to grow (in terms of sales, market, money, people, etc) and also identify better their stakeholders. Making public this statement, makes stronger the company’s commitment to carryout it. But to be useful, the company needs to built the mission statement honestly and then act with consistency, measure their work and prove their achieves, otherwise it won’t work.
I think it is also useful to have a vision and values statement, they are a useful guide that helps to built more things like a policies and strategies.
I agree with the general sentiment of this piece, in that most companies waste their opportunity to write a solid mission statement with real meaning. The end result being the vague, pointless statements that you mention in your article. But the philosophy behind mission statements and what they should be is a good one – not so much that they establish goals, but they lay the foundation for those goals to be developed.
Unfortunately, mission statements have become so commonplace and ingrained in the corporate psyche that marketing directors feel their brand isn’t complete with them. Sometimes you have to look at things a different way to realize what really makes sense. Not all traditions need to stay around forever.
Hey Jason – Maybe the reason you’re so ticked off by mission statements is that you see them as a wasted effort and lost time on behalf of branding. Let’s try re-framing your perspective. A mission statement is a useful reminder for the business owner or “C” level executive of why s/he is working so hard; it’s the short-hand blue print by which they’re going to reach their personal goal to sell, cash out, buy up, invest else where, retire or otherwise enjoy the liquidity event that all business owners ultimately believe is the reason to own one: make the money or fund the opportunity that will take them to their bigger-picture dream.
A mission statement doesn’t have to be about branding at all, unless it’s truly written creatively and cleverly enough to add to the company’s specific personality. For pure branding purposes, I’d say spend more time on a catchy tag line. But the mission statement? That’s the cleaned up version of that piece of paper crumpled up in my wallet reminding me of my exit strategy.
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