So, we’re all in agreement: mission statements are lame
I was happy to see a recent post by Siegel+Gale’s David Srere entitled “It’s Time to Bury Mission and Vision.” I agree with his initial points—vision and mission statements are almost always convoluted and trite, and are largely unknown to the employees they’re supposed to inspire or direct. I love Srere’s word, “bloated.” And I dare you to explain the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement and then support your assertion with real examples. Go ahead. Try it.
But I’m worried that his post doesn’t go far enough in explaining his proposed solution—the so-called “Purpose” (why is it capitalized?). Unlike a mission statement, Srere says, a Purpose is “a clear, credible, compelling response to a fundamental question: ‘Why do we do what we do?’.” Well, what if I told you that when mission statements were invented, the inventor said that the reason companies needed to have a Mission (and certainly it would have been capitalized back then) was to provide “a clear, credible, compelling response” to that same “fundamental question”? I have no idea if that’s true, and I don’t feel like reading a bunch of Peter Drucker or whoever I’d have to read to find out. But the point is that being able to identify a terrible mission statement doesn’t mean you’ll be able to come up with a great purpose statement (although perhaps it’s a good start). And who cares whether we call it a purpose, mission, vision, mantra, position, promise, or ethos?
The stereotypical mission statement (like Enron’s) is lame and pretty much useless, but capital-P Purpose statements can be just as vacuous and devoid of actionable meaning. Often, overly corporate MBA-speak is simply replaced with overly fluffy marketeer speak.
All of the brand strategy firms I’ve worked for have used some variation of the same presentation slide, usually immediately preceding the delivery of the purpose statement (or whatever it’s being called). The slide says something like (paraphrasing) “A Purpose is not a tagline. It is not just about a logo or an ad campaign. A Purpose defines why we exist and what value we offer to customers, employees, and other stakeholders.” Once the client has been primed, the purpose statement is let loose with much fanfare…and what is it? It’s a tagline. But it’s not a tagline—we just told you that. It just really, really looks like a tagline. But instead of using it as a tagline, we’re going to use it on a creative brief that will inform…what? A logo. Or maybe an ad campaign. But it’s much bigger than either of those things. Honest.
I’m being overly cynical, but I am sincerely worried that someone could read Srere’s post, which I agree with for the most part, and react by replacing mundane and useless statements with catchy and useless statements. I’ve complained about this problem before. It’s why I think his article should’ve been more explicit about the fact that what’s needed is not a shift in emphasis from one statement to another (mission to Purpose), but from statements to ideas. Because what often trips up organizations trying to write vision and mission statements is that they’re focused too much on statement and not enough on vision or mission. One litmus test could be trying to express the ideas without statements. I’m not talking about charades or Pictionary—I’m talking about explaining what the idea will do for/to the company. Because if the answer is “nothing,” we’ve been wasting our time, and if it’s “it will give us some ideas for our next ad campaign,” well…talk to your ad agency about that, because they probably have other notions. The idea should impact how the organization acts—at a corporate level or an individual employee level—and it should compel customers to think or act differently with respect to the organization.
As a strategist, these are the kinds of ideas that interest me, no matter how ineloquently expressed, because they have the potential to drive the kind of change our industry claims to be capable of delivering.
comment
Please Leave a Reply
TrackBack URL :
Nice post. Agreed. The over-exuberant disconnectedness of much of these efforts leads to what we see all over corporate-land: bullshit.
I think undramatic, plainspeaking simple description has become a lost art. There’re lots of reasons for it, and ego noise has been the go-to fuel for pumping up volumes for decades. But ceasing to be wrapped up into the winds of many meetings and the fluffery and puffery often required at C-level is essential methinks.
So it becomes critical to remain in critical thinking mode. Otherwise, emotions and egos gain hold of the reins causing a semantic rodeo.
Always good reading you, Rob.