Company Mission Statement

You are taught in business school that the one thing you should develop is a company mission statement for your and business but so many people get it wrong.

The mission and vision statement are one of the same thing and part of marketing development and may include terms such as objectives, value, purpose, goals an objectives but in reality a mission statement should be short and to the point so that every one can understand it from your customers to your staff.

Writing a Mission Statement

At the end of the day sometimes writing a mission statement should be simple as it's just a summary of the company strategy is there to tell people where the business is heading in easy to understand terms.

Unfortunately when you look at examples from big blue chip companies you are often left wondering what on earth is going on with their business as they are not specific enough so here are some dos and don'ts on writing a statement.

Don't include these in a mission statement

The worst you can do is say you are going to be the biggest and best in your industry but in reality that doesn't differentiate you from your competitiors so avoid using the following terms:

• Don't say you're going to be the biggest or best
• Avoid generally terms that don't mean anything
• Don't make your mission statement into a strategy document
• Don't waffle
• Avoid industry jargon and acronyms

Do the following

So if you are writing a statement what should you include? It does depend on your overall goal and if you are (for example) an environmentally friendly business or charity but try some of the following:

• Be specific in your goal terminology
• State why your business is in existence
• Refer to your employees, customers and suppliers
• State how you are going to achieve your goals
• Keep the entire statement to a couple of paragraphs

Mission Statement Examples

Here are some examples of mission statements that we quite like. The first few are frequently asked for (probably for business studies and school exercises) so we have listed them.

Mcdonalds Mission Statement

There seem to be a few online so here they are:

• "McDonald's vision is to be the world's best quick service restaurant experience. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness, and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile."
• "McDonald's aim to be the UK's best fast service restaurant experience."

But the one they have posted on their website reads "be our customers' favourite place and way to eat." which is great because it says who they are focused on (their customers) and what they hope to achieve. Behind this will be various strategies on defining "our customers", "favourite place" and "way to eat" and we are sure it took them many hours to develop it but it is a good example.

ebay mission statement

The ebay mission statement is akin to the McDonald's one in that it tells you exactly what is going on in a short 8 word sentence and reads "We help people trade practically anything on earth"

Google Mission Statement

Again, Google's mission statement ensures you understand what they are about very quickly. Their mission is simple "To organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"

So there you have 2 example mission statements from very large multinational companies which should help you understand how a mission statement is constructed and in reality it's something that's a paragraph or two long.

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