COUNTER CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
SITTING HIGH ON THE HORSE
A Sober View of the Mission Statement
Let's cast a cool eye on the mission statement. That's the one that tells the world what the firm's role in life is.
What's wrong with that? Why not tell the business world, and particularly your clients and prospective clients, that you have a purpose beyond simply doing what they think they're paying you to do?
Nothing's wrong with the mission statement, if it clarifies an aim and a purpose that's rooted in reality. And certainly, mission statements used internally to let the firm's people know what the firm stands for can be valuable.
The problem is that most mission statements tend to be banners, flaunted to the outside world, painted in bright colors, designed to attract attention, but rooted in no known reality.
Let's go back to first principles. What a firm is really saying is, "These are our firm objectives. We state them so that you understand how our firm can serve your firm."
Essentially, this makes sense. Professional firms have nothing to sell but services, and nothing to project their abilities with but service concepts. If you can't say, "We do better audits," or "We do better briefs." You somehow have to persuade clients and prospects that you're more dedicated to serving their needs than are your competitors.
One way to do this is to state your own firm objectives. "Our goal is to serve our clients in the best context and performance of our profession."
But somewhere along the line, this statement of objectives took a wrong turn. In the attempts we all seem to make at self-glorification, the objectives became a mission (who's got the white horse and shield concession?), and the statement of objectives became a mission statement. And writing them in annual reports, press releases, brochures, and so forth gave a lot of people a warm glow.
Sorry to cast a shadow on warm glows, but self serving is self serving, and that's what mission statements tend to be. "Our mission is to ascend Mt. Everest." Good. Don't wake me when you leave in the morning, unless it's to tell me what you're going to do to solve my problems.
Now if your mission is to solve my problems, that can be a different story. But not necessarily a better one. It doesn't matter who you are, you can't solve every problem. One of the things we really have learned in marketing professional services is that we sell better when we address specific problems, and then show how we can solve them. Unfortunately, mission statements tend to be too broad to cover that.
The warm feeling engendered by the mission statement writer tends to stay with the author and the subject, and rarely transmits itself to the object -- the client and prospective client.