If a company’s strategy represents its overall approach tomaximizing business success—stated in terms of achieving certain sales, profits, product delivery, and employee turnover goals—then the mission statement represents a more generalized and idealistic vision of the company’s purpose in life. If done right, a mission statement can go a long way toward energizing everyone in an organization to achieve the ideal.
Unfortunately, in the rush to develop mission statements, many companies have established statements that are somehow too general and lofty. I have seen a number of missionstatements that commit companies to being “the producer of the highest-quality (name the product) in the world” or “the top company in the (name the industry).” In my experience, the best mission statements are oriented in either of two directions: ..more
