What Makes A Powerful Mission Statement?

Over the past several decades, organizational leaders have grown to appreciate the role of purpose in building a thriving company. A strong sense of purpose attracts great talent, keeps them motivated and engaged, and bonds them together with coworkers to increase collaboration. For many senior leaders, however, organizational purpose begins and ends with a few flowery words written on a plaque or on the front page of annual report.

Of course, we’re talking about the mission statement.

The committee-crafted, jargon laden paragraph (or hopefully less) that gets quoted every so often in speeches and referenced in most printed documents. It’s important to give credit for trying where its due: there are few organizations where leaders haven’t given thought to answering the question of what we’re working toward. That’s great. But it’s also important to point out the flaws in the status quo:

Most mission statements aren’t all that inspiring.

They lack power either because they’re wordy and complicated, or because they’re written in an attempt to satisfy every stakeholder…which usually ends up inspiring none of them. Fortunately, there is an easy way to know whether or not your organization’s mission statement inspires, or merely satisfies. In this article, we’ll review the four elements of a powerful…