Mission Statement, Mantra or Nothing At All?

As our company grapples with the question of "what do we want to be when we grow up?", there is a natural desire to want to pull the organization together and develop a mission statement that sums up our company's reason for being. If delivered as advertised, the mission statement should explain our intentions, priorities, and values to people inside and outside our company. It should guide us and help us stay focused on the things that are most important to us. If we ever question whether what we need to prioritize or a particular course of action, we can look back on our mission statement and see if the proposal is consistent with our mission.

Sounds good right? But at what stage is it appropriate for an organization to formally develop a formal mission statement? Is it better to organically let the company evolve and then allow for a mission to come about as a result of market learnings? Or is it better to dictate the direction and guide a company in that direction? Or is Guy Kawasaki correct that a mission statements is useless and what a company really need is a three to four word mantra?

As with a lot of things in life, I believe the answer is...it depends. While I certainly have witnessed mission statements that were developed by committees with everyone having equal votes that spoke to everyone's points and at the end addressed no one's beliefs or values. I believe that it is important for a company at any stage of it's evolution to hold itself accountable and write down their objective and their goals...otherwise, it is just too easy for every feature and every project to be classified as Priority 1s with each discussion going back to the question of "what do we want to achieve here"...As for our company, we are working on a three to four word mantra so that anyone and everyone on our extended team can easily explain what we are doing. In addition, we are developing a mission statement to help guide us in our prioritizing features and projects as well as using it as a basis for our elevator pitch, messaging and positioning. I'll keep you posted.

Btw, if you are ready to outsource your mission statement work, I would highly recommend checking out Dilbert's mission statement generator or the mission generator slot machine.