Orange Envelopes | Small Business Optimized Marketing > By Design

Someone should create a mission statement for any company attempting to create a mission statement. Something like this:

We will critically examine our company to determine why we do what we do. What inspires us. What drives us. What excites us. Then we’ll write a brief statement that accurately, and singularly, describes our company. That can fit on a t-shirt. It will not contain the words: best, leading, biggest, profit, diversity, growth or exceed expectations.

Now, if you really, really feel that a mission statement is essential to understanding and guiding your business, you have the rules. My question is: Why do so many companies break these rules and create irredeemably awful, platitudinous and ultimately pointless mission statements?

My ire was inspired by an article I read on the Smart Business Online website this week detailing the efforts of Staffmark CEO Frederick Kohnke to rebrand his national staffing company around a unified vision, mission and values. The project took nine months and resulted in one of the most useless, generic mission statements I’ve ever read.

Really. That’s not just hyperbole. Although the resulting mission statement wasn’t included in the article (wtf?) I found it on the Staffmark website. Their mission:

To always strive to exceed the expectations of our employees, business customers, and external stakeholders.

How’s that for exciting? Really gets your juices flowing, doesn’t it? Strive to exceed expectations. What’s the matter, think outside the box was taken?

If you spend nine months creating a mission statement, odds are that it will be created not by the company founder or CEO, but by a committee tasked with the job of creating an inclusive mission statement. One that will take into account all their stakeholders, will be legally benign, generally inoffensive and ultimately uninspiring. One that will be guaranteed to include no distinctive or compelling voice, no descriptive or detailed verbs and certainly nothing that will differentiate it from any other staffing company. Staffmark succeeded spectacularly on all these counts.

What’s so terribly disappointing is that genuine, heartfelt mission statements can be inspiring and unique. Consider Ben & Jerry’s mission statement:

To make, distribute & sell the finest quality all natural ice cream & euphoric concoctions with a continued commitment to incorporating wholesome, natural ingredients and promoting business practices that respect the Earth and the Environment.

There’s not another ice cream manufacturer that could claim that mission statement. Euphoric concoctions. How wonderful is that phrase?  The precise wording matters because it captures the essence of Ben & Jerry’s. It could not be transferred to Briar’s website, or Edy’s or Haagen Dazs.

Or consider Coca-Cola’s mission to refresh the world. It captures their company spirit in a way that PepsiCo’s mission to be the world’s premier consumer products company focused on convenient foods and beverages doesn’t.

Being the premier, leading, biggest, most profitable company isn’t a mission, it’s an objective. It’s not inspiring to anyone outside of the company boardroom. Not one of your employees will get out of bed tomorrow and say to themselves “How am I going to make Company X bigger today?”  But I’ll bet there are Disney employees who get up and ask themselves “How can I make someone happy today?” And I’m certain that there are Apple employees who can’t wait to get to work to do something insanely great.

But apparently Staffmark is content with their employees exceeding expectations. Whose expectations? We don’t know. How are the expectations measured? We’re not sure. How will anyone know when they’ve exceeded expectations? They won’t. But, gosh darn it, it’s better to exceed expectations than fail to meet them, right? Then that’s the goal.

And I’ll bet that if I were to call 20 of Staffmark’s employees today, not more than one or two would be able to recount their company’s mundane mission statement. Anyone want to take me up on that?