InformationWeek

Secret CIO: A Mission Is Our Mission

Old Mr. Big just assumed we knew why we're in business. Our new president wants a glorious and uplifting mission statement.

By Herbert W. Lovelace
Issue column appeared: Feb. 24, 1997

Philip T. Whitestone, our president, has decided it's time to make his mark on the company. I saw this coming. He's been getting testy every time someone mentions the name of his predecessor, whom we fondly called Mr. Big.

I think Phil was getting just a little tired of being compared to the man who took us from a backwater firm to a multination al enterprise. Therefore, it came as no surprise when he announced we needed a dynamic mission statement.

This proved to be an interesting task, since we had never had a mission statement. Even though it was in vogue for years to adorn corporate reports with a glorious and uplifting mission statement, old Mr. Big assumed we had a general idea of why we were in business, which translated into: Make money, but don't stick it to the customers or they won't be back, and don't stick it to the community or government, either, or else you'll live to regret it. It was never written down, but everyone pretty much understood that these were the rules.

Anyway, the Executive Committee agreed to convene itself, the corporate staff, and key business unit heads as the group that will come up with the company mission statement. We were directed to assemble at a downtown hotel to craft the words of wisdom that will energize the troops and focus all our attention on the evil competition that intends to seduce our innoc ent customers into abandoning the only company that really has their best interests at heart. You get the picture.

The meeting started off well enough; the pastry was fresh and the coffee strong. There were even those little bagels with marmalade for which Phil is famous-and which earned him his appellation, "Sir Marmalade." I was bemused by the exercise since I couldn't imagine that it would yield anything other than homogenized pap, signifying nothing. With that number of people in the room, it's like having the audience, not the author, try to write the play.

Stephanie Stone, our less-than-beloved human resources VP, started us off by expanding on the reasons that motivational focus and human dynamics, whatever they are, are the key to our success. This came as a surprise, since Stephanie can turn living flesh into her namesake if you disagree with her. One of Stephanie's minions then asked us to identify the values of the company, frenetically writing our answers on flip charts and plastering the walls with the results. This went on throughout the morning.

Cast Your Ballot
Next, we milled around the room marking the charts with our votes for the top five and discussing which topics can be combined. We then worked hard at blending together all the ideas into a gloriously all-encompassing mission statement. Naturally, the more all-inclusive we got, the more insipid we became. Since it's important that we don't exclude anyone, we came up with classic statements like "produce industry-leading products" and "place our customers and constituencies first."

By the end of the day, we had come up with something that I must admit sounded nice and, more important, will look great on the annual report. Of course, it doesn't mean very much; after all, what company doesn't want to produce industry-leading products? The saving grace, however, is that the mission statement is so long, no one could possibly remember what it says, so no harm has been done. Now Phil is happy-and I have a better unders tanding of why Mr. Big got things accomplished.

Herbert W. Lovelace is CIO at a multibillion-dollar international company. He can be contacted by E-mail at secret@cmp.com . He'll provide real answers (and whimsical comments) to your questions on his Web page, http://techweb.cmp.com/iw/current/secret.htm.

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