What’s with Mission Statements? It seems every time I look at one it is just a bunch of meaningless doubletalk. For that matter, why call it a mission statement? Are all these sites run by secret agents or something? Whats wrong with calling it “About Us”, and actually saying who you are and what you do?

Mission Statement
“We help clients in all industries create distinctive process capabilities and to leverage those capabilities for competitive advantage. How we help our clients succeed is as important as the results.”  

I kid you not - I pulled that off the web. There were several more paragraphs, but to be honest after reading the page I still haven’t a clue what they actually do.

Is it just me or do others need to fight down the gag reflex when they see this type of stuff on a web site? I always get the feeling they are more interested in selling manure than any products or services I might actually be interested in. Why not just come right out and tell folks you are full of crap and it seems to have backed up onto your web site. It almost seems like they hire political speechwriters to come up with this junk - a whole lot of words without actually saying anything.

Are the days when folks expected to actually understand what your business does or can do for them a thing of the past? Personally I feel no amount of doubletalk, jargon, etc… can substitute for plain talk about who you are and what you do / offer. Why be intentionally obtuse? David Weinberg’s Beyond shareholder value has a great suggestion for the opening line of mission statements. Start by telling folks something they want to hear. 

For the folks that insist on using this nonsense try this Mission Statement Generator the random mission statement it spits out will make as much sense as anything else you write, and if nothing else is good for a few laughs.