FLY ON THE WALL MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I think this mission-statement business has gotten way out of hand. What? Your business doesn’t have a mission statement? How do you compete? How do you confuse customers and clients? It wasn’t that long ago that nobody had ever heard of a mission statement. Those of us trying to make a living just soil of flailed along trying to make a buck, hoping that word of mouth or traditional advertising might help get out the word on what we do and how we do it.

Enter Stephen R. Covey, whose Seven Habits of Highly Effective People sold about a billion copies and birthed a new generation of business holistic. The central concept is the mission statement, a catchy little quip that’s supposed to sum up in just a few words the essence of your company and explain to prospective customers why they should throw money at you.

Problem is, most businesses these days are complex entities; some are huge and diversified, some are tiny and nil tinier market niches, and many lie in between. In each of these situations, describing yourself or your business in just a few words is a tough task. It’s no wonder that so many of these mission statements sound alike.

How many times, for instance, have you tuned to KERA and listened as station directors thank one of their underwriters whose claim to fame is that they boldly go where no company has gone before to “offer creative management alternatives to ensure strategic success for a wide variety of diverse institutional clients” or words to that effect? No offense intended, but I can’t really tell what the hell that company does, Frankly. I’ve heard variations of that particular mission statement so many times, my guess is that it’s a pretty popular mission, whatever it is. And it must be a really competitive business, because there are lots of folks out there trying to do it.

In a former life. I was a lawyer, and a firm I worked for once devoted an entire weekend retreat to the process of creating our mission statement. What we came up with was not that different from the generic tripe currently in vogue, but I have to admit that it was an interesting process, largely because of what we decided to exclude. I, for instance, suggested that we could describe ourselves as “committed to making as much money as possible using our otherwise unmarketable graduate degrees.” That made sense to me-short, sweet and to the point-and it had the added benefit of what I characterized as “disarming candor.”

My partners also were disarmingly candid in critiquing my suggestion, and my proposed mission statement got canned. even though I augmented (he initial sentiment with (he words “and dedicated to making the lives of your business enemies a living hell.” 1 thought it was a strong suggestion, but we ended up with one of those watered-down, say-nothing sentences that probably left most people scratching their heads and looking like dogs that heard a funny noise.

For what it’s worth. I’ve developed a few guidelines you might want to bear in mind if you end up struggling with a business mission statement. These suggestions ought to help you set your company apart. If they don’t, maybe you should try a different line of work.

DONT USE FANCY WORDS. People don’t care how big your vocabulary is. If you are a garbage man. I would go with “I’m the best damned garbage man there is” instead of “dedicated to environmental responsibility through strategic sanitation removal,” If all you want to do is haul off garbage, you don’t want to field a bunch of calls from people who would like you to take care of their nuclear waste.

BE BRIEF. Don’t use more words than you have to. Is it really necessary for a discount retailer to say anything more than “We sell stuff cheap?” I don’t think so.

BE BRAVE. Don’t be afraid to say what you’re really about. If you run a grocery store, don’t shy away from emphasizing your ability to cut prices drastically on stuff like rotten food. Any grocery store can sell fresh food at high prices. Set yourself apart- your mission can be “Selling food that probably won’t make you sick if you eat it fast enough.”

TRUST YOUR AUDIENCE. Most people can see through the mission-statement smoke screen thrown up by so many companies. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and let them decide whether to do business with you based on an accurate description of what you do and why they should do business with you. Everybody expects quality products and responsive service, so you do nothing to sell your business if you focus on these traits. Tell your customers what you really want them to know and let them make the decision for themselves,

Come to think of it, following these rules will probably result in lots of mission statements that sound an awful lot alike. Let’s see-candid, simple, brief, brave. 1 know-I’ve got the new generic mission statement: “We make money any damned way we can.”

Tough to argue with that one, isn’t it?