Your Mission for 2009 (should you choose to accept it…)
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Jan 5, 2009
Years ago my husband worked for a company that proudly hung a gigantic banner in the main office area with their Mission Statement printed boldly on it. The “higher-up’s” suspected low morale (quite accurately) and the CEO thought an inspiring reminder of “their” mission would fix that problem right up. The banner read, “TO BE ALL THAT WE CAN BE.” (Lest you think they were the Army, you should know that they were a software company.) They’re out of business now. From that clear and uniquely compelling Mission Statement I’m sure you can’t imagine why.
There are 2 useful points that we can take from this sorry tale.
#1: Marketing isn’t just about delivering a message to those outside the company. Internal marketing is also very, very important. Everyone that works for you or with you should be continually reminded of your company’s most important messages: the company’s story, values, purpose, mission, etc. Everything you market to the outside world should be marketed internally. This will ensure that your employees and partners are clear about what your business is about and turn your company into a marketing company that produces XYZ - Which is how every company must come to think of themselves if they are to survive.
#2. There seems to be some confusion about the purpose of the Mission Statement. Most companies seem to think that their mission statement is a short, pithy way of describing the overall purpose of the business. I beg to differ. For Mission Statements to be valuable they should form the basis of a short-term marketing strategy and they should change often – either when the mission has been accomplished, or when the mission needs to change. From this perspective, a more useful way to define a mission statement might be:
A clear end point to work towards.
This description from Growth Connection does an excellent job of conveying this concept:
A true mission is a clear and compelling goal that focuses people’s efforts. It is tangible, specific, crisp, clear and engaging. It reaches out and grabs people in the gut. Like the moon flight, a good mission has a clear finish line — you should be able to tell when you’ve done it — at which point, you need to create a new mission. “We’re going to climb Mount Everest” is a mission; the more general, “We’re going to climb the Himalayas” is not.
And, like the moon flight, a good mission is risky, falling in a gray zone where reason says, “This is unreasonable”; and your intuition and drive say, “But we believe we can do it anyway.”
In summary, a mission is
* “What we are here to do”
* A clear and compelling goal that serves to unify an organization’s efforts
* Crisp, clear, engaging, verging on unreasonable.
Think of the Mission Statements of your business as New Year’s resolutions for your business. What exactly are you going to accomplish this year? What changes are you going to make? What are you going to do better? The answers to these questions encompass your mission for the coming months. How you go about accomplishing the mission is the basis for your marketing strategy.
Just as many of us draft up resolutions every January, your mission statement(s) should change every time you draft up a short-term (6 months to 1 year) marketing strategy. Your mission statement is the definition of your marketing strategy’s achievable goal – a clear “finish line”. This statement should inspire and focus you. You should be able to read it and be able to imagine what it will feel like to reach that goal. Just like good resolutions, they should both stretch and empower you.
