So many companies have written down missions and visions that you would actually take them to be important.
Sorry to break the bad news - they are not, There are three types of companies that write mission & vision statements:
- Companies that have enough inactive people who can pretend to work by devising missions and visions, and pass time by the deliberations.
- Companies that have enough people with so much rote-learning that they can't help following every step in the book, even though they have no clue of the steps.
- Companies that love their brand structures; the more esoteric, confusing and complex the better.
Seriously, when was the last time someone saw a mission or vision statement to come to any use, apart from wasting a couple of slides of a presentation or a few pages of a booklet?
Naturally, almost all mission and vision statements show the following characteristics:
- They contain boastful words and puffed-up, flowery language.
- They contain vague unsubstantiated claims such as - "We are the industry leaders with a commitment to <insert industry here> excellence."
- They focus on the speculation about the future of the company: becoming the industry leader, or the top producer, or the most reliable manufacturer.
- They are promotional in both tone and purpose.
There is a lot of talk that says a vision and a mission is the guide to a companies policies and strategy. All bull. Go through a significant number of those visions and missions, and you will learn one thing for sure - nobody knows which is a vision and which is a missions.
There are plenty conjectures on what constitutes a vision and what is a mission statement. And, not surprisingly they never agree to each other. The summary? They are all equally meaningless.
Vision and mission statement mean nothing. They are just fancy slogans that supposedly gets the employees excited. Really! Have you ever met ANY employee of ANY company who was inspired by the company vision or mission statement.
