A mission statement needs to be concise and aligned with the company’s vision. Too many firm’s missions end up becoming an exercise in futility, but a well-formed, thoughtful mission statement can be a company’s lighthouse in the corporate storm. An effective mission should carve the organization’s purpose down to its core values and goals. To avoid a worthless mission statement, team leaders need to ask themselves three key questions: what, how and for whom?
What?
The firm needs to answer from the customers’ perspective. What does this firm offer its customers? Take for example an insurance firm. When asked what the firm does, they could answer: “We market affordable health insurance.” However, to truly understand what insurance firm x does, they need to answer from a buyer’s perspective. In this case, they might answer: “We provide financial security via affordable health insurance.” Looking from a consumer-fulfilling perspective will help answer the other two questions.
How?
In answering the ‘how’, the management team will describe how the physical product or service is brought or delivered to their customers. The description should match the consumer-focused answer to the first question. Until the firm reorganized its answer to the first question, Insurance firm x originally began selling insurance the traditional way, door to door. After insurance firm x modified its ‘What’ answer, it realized in order to make its product more affordable to customers the firm should begin selling via telephone. The delivery method needed to match the product being sold.
For Whom?
To narrow the firm’s marketing efforts, insurance firm x must define its target market. To get started classify the demographic and include any possible buying limitations. The basic characteristics of the firm’s average customer are important in order to form marketing strategies. In addition, since insurance firm x shifted its business from in-person sales to phone sales, the firm is able to cut out geographic limitations for its potential customers. As the business grows, more target groups may be added and limitations may be added or subtracted. As time goes on, the firm can write individual, specific mission statements for each customer group in order to better serve each target market.
In the end, a mission statement is meant to guide your business by focusing the firm’s efforts on the few most important avenues. That said, the mission statement is not intended to narrow the focus so much that the company ceases to innovate. As the company grows and the surrounding environment varies, the mission statement may need alterations in order to stay on target. Therefore, the mission statement should not be set in stone, instead it should be revisited every so often to make sure it is still an accurate assessment of the business’ goals.
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