Does Your Strategy Contain the Attributes of an Effective Mission Statement?
We find that 70% of mission statements do not meet the mark because they lack the necessary attributes of an effective mission statement.
Mission Defines your Fundamental Purpose – Your Greater Reason Why
Your mission articulates why the company’s work matters. The clearer you can be about the business you are in and your fundamental purpose, the easier it is to define a successful strategy that your key stakeholders — employees, owners and customers alike — can rally behind.
If you know the attributes of an effective mission statement, it can help to create strategic clarity.
Why Do Companies and Team Struggle with Mission Statements?
Explaining succinctly why you are in business is the aim of a well-crafted mission statement. Unfortunately, too many companies struggle to articulate a meaningful statement of their organization’s mission. The best ones are those that define a business and its purpose in one brief, impactful, and simple sentence.
The difficulty lies in avoiding buzz words and differentiating your business from others. It is all too easy to say that “your customers always come first” or that “quality is your primary concern.” While we believe that the process of creating a mission statement is as or more important than the statement itself, neither of these phrases differentiates your business from others.
Examples of Mission Statements
Here are a few examples of mission statements from companies that you probably recognize.
Eight Attributes of an Effective Mission Statement
A well-crafted corporate mission, one that has all the attributes of an effective mission statement, usually has some semblance of the following format:
“To provide (your ideal target customers) with (your core products and services)
that deliver (distinct benefits and results).”
While each of the above mission statements have things we like, such as Google’s aspiration or Budweiser’s simplicity, here are some tips on the attributes of an effective mission statement to help get your mission right. While you do not necessarily need all eight, they are a good place to start.
A mission statement is less potent if employees find it too easy to achieve or beyond the realm of possibility for your market, industry, competition and people.
The Bottom Line
Our organizational alignment research found that strategic clarity accounts for 31% of the difference between high and low performing organizations. A clear and compelling mission is a fundamental component of that clarity. Before you expend time and energy on putting together a mission statement:
To learn more about creating a clear and compelling strategy for success, download 7 Ways to Stress Test Your Strategy
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