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Who are you?
What is your business?
If you can’t answer those questions, you’re in trouble.
The answers to those questions dictate how you interact with your customers and employees.
Your business mission statement is the most important part of your business plan because it tells you what else is important.
If your business has multiple departments of considerable size you could effectively have a couple of layers of mission statements. But they need to be strategically coordinated. The mission of your sales organization should be complimentary to the mission of the marketing organization. Same as accounting, finance, operations, and everything else.
One of the downfalls of bigger businesses is that the silos compete with each other for power and prestige. Instead of being a unified front against outside competition, many businesses see their fiercest competition coming from down the hall.
Three rules make your business mission statement effective:
Rule # 1: Keep it brief. Einstein supposedly said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Long mission statements don’t help you evaluate decisions on a daily basis – you won’t remember them.
Rule # 2: Memorize it. Your entire company needs to eat, sleep, and breathe your mission statement. It needs to inform everyone from the newest entry level employee to the board of directors.
Rule # 3: Live it. If you have any level of hypocrisy in your mission statement, everyone will know it and the result will be worse than having no business mission statement at all.
If your business mission statement talks about treating people with respect, but your customers, employees, and vendors don’t feel that way, you will lose business. This is completely a leadership issue. If you lead a company or department, you have to model and exemplify your mission statement’s values for them to resonate.