Mission Statement Report Card

How to Develop a Mission Statement

For those who want to learn how to develop a mission statement, we showcase a few mission statements from big companies and assess how they did it right and what they did wrong.

Wondering how to develop a mission statement?

Mission statements can be tricky. Even highly successful companies sometimes run into problems when they attempt to condense their reason for existing into a single, concise statement.

To help you get it right, here's our report card on a sampling of mission statements from the world of big business.

Triad Hospitals

To continuously improve the quality of healthcare services provided to the communities we serve by creating an environment that fosters physician participation, recognizes the value and contributions of our employees, and strives to meet the unique healthcare needs of our local communities.

From a technical standpoint, Triad Hospitals' mission statement adequately covers the three key areas: Purpose, activities, and values. Unfortunately, the way they communicated that information was boring and uninspiring. Instead of dealing with the difficult process of culling their information down into a few essential points, they tried to assimilate too much information, resulting in a mission statement that is long, wordy, and just plain dull.

Sanmina-SCI

We are committed to focusing on our customers, delivering superior quality and offering the industry's best operations anywhere in the world. Even more, we realize customer satisfaction drives our business and we are unyielding in our promise to meet their expectations in quality, delivery, and performance.

Here's a question: What does Sanmina-SCI actually do? Believe it or not, Sanmina is an electronics manufacturer. But if you are relying on their mission statement for that information you are going to be disappointed. Although they go out of their way to emphasize the importance of customer satisfaction, they fail to adequately describe their company's activities or even the industry sector in which they are located. This oversight could have easily been avoided if they had stuck to a simpler version detailing their primary activities in terms that have real meaning for employees and outsiders.

Chevron

To be the global energy company most admired for its people, partnership, and performance.

Chevron gets high marks for keeping it brief and communicating their mission in terms understood by people who don't have an advanced business degree. The downside is that their mission statement is so focused on who they want to be that it doesn't really address who they are right now. It's a great goal to want to be the most admired energy company on the planet, but what mission are they working on now that will help them achieve that goal?

WPS Resources

To provide customers with the best value in energy and related services.

WPS Resources gets the highest marks on our report card. Their mission statement is brief, insightful present-focused, and written in language anyone can understand. More importantly, by keeping it simple they have managed to create a mission statement capable of inspiring their employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

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