InformationWeek

June 8, 1998

Secret CIO:
Mission Inversible

Most mission statements tend to be more mind-freezing than heartwarming

By Herbert W. Lovelace

am very interested in mission statements. In fact, I have written about how we bungled creating one for our own company. That bad experience notwithstanding--or perhaps because of it--I am impressed when I see an assertion that expresses the real guts and sinews of an organi zation. You know a good mission statement when you see one. Take Merck's, for example: "We are in the business of preserving and improving human life." That declaration is emotional dynamite. Disney has another great one: "To use our imagination to bring happiness to millions of people." What a winner that pronouncement is!

Unfortunately, most mission statements tend to be more mind-freezing than heartwarming. I was reminded of this situation when, at an industry gathering, a buddy of mine told me that he had been appointed by his CEO to a committee to build his company's mission statement, and how proud he was of the result.

I won't quote it here (there's a limit to the amount of space I am permitted), but suffice it to say I finished my cocktail in the time it took him to read it from the card he removed from his jacket pocket.

I didn't want to disappoint him, so when he asked my opinion, I nodded sagely and said, "It really captures the essence of your company's culture and refle cts the fact that you had so many people providing input." Given that his corporation does not have a particularly good image, and that we all know what a horse designed by a committee looks like, I felt that I was being both honest and thoughtful. In any case, he walked away happy, clutching the little blue card and a plate of hors d'oeuvres in one hand, and his scotch in the other.

He got me to thinking about mission statements, and, while munching on a celery stalk, I modestly came up with some guidelines for writing a good one.

It seems to me there are two essential elements:

Mission statements must be short. After all, if it's too long for employees to repeat from memory, it doesn't do much good, does it? It took a little something away from the fervor of the presentation I had just witnessed when my friend had to pull a card from his pocket to read to me the underlying truths of his company.
Mission statements must not contain meaningless platitudes, or else you r un the risk of the organization thinking that hollow platitudes are of great significance to your executive management. Of course, they might be. If so, however, you are better off not letting any more people than necessary know. Your employees--at least the smart ones--will find out all too soon on their own.

Reversal Of Fortune
Pondering this tendency for companies to say the obvious with great fanfare, I arrived at an epiphany that only comes with great understanding, or in my case, that second and final drink of the evening. I call this discovery the Inverse Rule of Mission Statement Creation: If a phrase is generic enough to fit into any mission statement, replace the cliché with its inverse and read it out loud. If it makes you giggle, get it out of there. For example: "We are customer-focused and care about our customers." That sounds very nice, but who doesn't share those feelings? Consider the inverse: "We are not customer-focused and do not care about our customers. " See my point?

Just imagine all the fun we can have dissecting mission statements. Maybe there is even an inverse relationship between stock price and MSS (Mission Statement Silliness). It may require attending more cocktail parties to find the correlation, but in the interest of research, we all owe it to ourselves.

Herbert W. Lovelace is the CIO at a multibillion-dollar international company. Herb practices his day job under an alias and has changed the names of colleagues to protect the guilty. Send him E-mail at lovelace@home.com . He'll provide real answers--and whimsical comments--to your questions on InformationWeek Online at www.InformationWeek.com .