An organization’s mission statement outlines the core purpose or reason for its’s existence. Peter Drucker, often called the father of modern management, said a mission is the primary tool to guide in creating strategies or making short-term decisions. The mission statement conveys information about an organization’s products, services, customers, markets and values to all of its stakeholders. Here is a technique for crafting an effective mission statement for your organization…

For a mission to be effective, it should ideally include the following 7 elements:[

  1. Customers. Who are your customers?
  2. Products or services. What are the main products/services that you offer?
  3. Markets. In which geographies or industries/sectors/verticals do you operate?
  4. Uniqueness. What is the organizations uniqueness or competitive advantage e.g. unique technology, process, specific competencies?
  5. Values. What are the values and philosophies that you advocate?
  6. Citizenship. What do you offer to your community in terms of social responsibility, concern for environment, etc ?
  7. Employees. How does the organization treat its employees?

Now let’s take a sample mission statement to test it. This is from the international courier company UPS:

  1. Grow our global business by serving the logistics needs of customers, offering excellence and value in all that we do.
  2. Maintain a financially strong company-with broad employee ownership-that provides a long-term competitive return to our shareowners.
  3. Inspire our people and business partners to do their best, offering opportunities for personal development and success.
  4. Lead by example as a responsible, caring, and sustainable company making a difference in the communities we serve.

As you can see, this is quite an effective mission statement as it includes most of the 7 elements. The challenge of course is to make it much more brief so it is easier to remember for all stakeholders.