How it feels to read a bad mission statement
Alarms went off. The lights turned red. We started pushing through each other and running down the stairs. To outrace and be the first to flee into the conference room! This was a way out. There was an instruction for such cases. We saw it – the big white banner with letters. It must be important. John read it out loud!
“My mission is to create positive liberation experience through an alignment to global strategies of fire code ordinances. I help to entice the surviving process by showing you the escape window that is there, on the left side from you if you stand back to the doors”.
The News reports were filled with events of that night. The fire was put out by the firefighters in 1 hour. 37 people were taken to the hospitals and diagnosed with facepalming* syndrome because of the stupidity of instruction’s mission statement.
*Facepalm – an act of covering face with your hand because of feeling embarrassed, annoyed, or disappointed.
What is a mission statement and how to build it?
The mission statement is a sentence indicating purposes and the reasons for developing your business. As staff and clients read it, they have to immediately grasp the concept of values, ethics, and fundamental goals of your company. So yeah, it’s not an easy task. First, prepare for self-interrogations and all Whys and Hows. Here are several tips on how to write a mission statement.
1. Answer all Whys and Hows
- What do we do today? (sell bamboo toothbrushes, print logos on T-Shirts, create video-content);
- For whom do we do it? (for environmentally conscious people, for corporate companies, for bloggers and advertisers);
- What is the benefit? (the support of environmental movements, personalization, creative content);
- Why do we do it? (to reduce the waste of plastic toothbrushes, to help companies enhance corporate culture, to create unique videos with professional video footage).
Before writing the concept in one sentence, understand what your company does. Determine its standards and the reasons to promote the product (except for revenue).