I’m a big fan of a wildly successful little Chicago-based company called 37signals and I read their blog quite frequently. They had a post yesterday about mission statements and their frequent irrelevance. I’ve thought about having one before, even though my business model hangs heavily on the idea that the traditional business model might be outdated — business plan, what? So I ask, should I have a mission statement? Do you?
Here’s the 37signals article, “The difference between truly standing for something and a mission statement”.
Okay, so I’m a freelancer. Eventually, I’d like to grow into a three or four person company and finally a seven or eight person company. I’ll let that pan out before I revaluate. The point is I’m small, I like small and I’d like to stay small. I’m not looking to grow into a web magnate (though some very pure successes that lend well to all three or four/seven or eight of us doing really well is expected).
As of today, I don’t have a mission statement. I have a solid, intuitive understanding of myself and my company.
In a business structure, good communication tends to enable members of a team to understand their role and the organization’s values. I wonder, did the mission statement craze come about because of poor business communication, because of managers and administration failing at communicating the company’s nature? I don’t know, maybe mission statements are fundamental to orchestrating a large business. I’ve never tried.
We read about these big business all-stars because they write books about business that get attention and get written up by book critics. But I don’t want to be a big business, so why should I care? Look at this list and this one: it’s all about big business or growing a business. Apparently, we’re all supposed to want to get big. But how many of us are, and how many of us ever will be?
For that matter, isn’t this eternal growth model what’s got us all into trouble? Long-term exponential growth is impossible, yet it’s what our entire market is counting on. Okay, that’s an aside — but we really need to focus on the idea of sustainable business. That is, what can we do to have long-term, stable, consistent profits over wild, bi-polar ups and downs. It is not a failure for your company’s growth to flatten off at some point. In fact, it’s natural.
Anyway, back to mission statements. Do we really need them?
37signals’ Matt Linderman says this:
[T]here’s a world of difference between truly standing for something and having a mission statement that says you stand for something.
“The difference between truly standing for something and a mission statement”
That’s what it comes down to. If you stand for something, isn’t it plainly obvious in your work, in your presence and in your reputation?
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I was going to Digg this but I can’t remember my Digg username OR password.
Anyway, what you say, and the article you cited, are so true. Mission statements may once have been sincere visionary guidelines, but now they are sorry excuses for actually caring about customers, employees, or anything for that matter other than turning as much profit as possible at as low a quality as possible. Keep on with the invisible mission statement.
by Emily on April 17, 2009 at 4:22 pm