By David Creelman

Having your mission statement plastered all over the walls is often mocked by employees. But before we tear them down and burn them in the parking lot, we need to think why we put them there in the first place.  There was a good reason for it, and we need to hang on to the reason even as we are striking the match.

A mission statement serves HR’s need to get people working towards common strategic goals. This is a very important objective for HR and by no means easy to achieve. Succinctly stating the goals in a mission statement, and then making sure that mission statement is repeated on every available surface, seems a reasonable thing to do.

So far so good; but the problem with mission statements is that they are bland, boring and  feel unconnected to the actual work. Since our standard approach isn’t working, maybe we can learn from the people who communicate mission really well—the successful restaurant chain Pret A Manger.

Pret A Manger
Based in the UK, Pret competes in the fast food area—although they would be horrified to be compared to McDonald’s or KFC because they have a mission of providing natural handmade food and doing so in an ecologically sound manner. It’s a mission they achieve admirably.

How do they communicate this mission to the world?  One important way is by including a message about the mission at every available opportunity.

So, on every product, whether a napkin, a bottle of juice or a sandwich, they have a little paragraph explaining how this product relates to their mission.  For example, the sandwich box says “Just Made (never from a factory). A Pret fresh sandwich doesn’t need a “use-by” date. We make our food in every Pret kitchen using amazing ingredients. The best, natural stuff you’d want to use at home. Made today, gone today. Absolutely no cutting corners.”  The drink label begins “The bottle of drink is full of nothing. It contains NO fat…” and goes on for about 60 words.  The bottle cap says wryly “Best when chilled (as indeed we are all)”.

They don’t repeat the same blurb over and over until it is meaningless, they keep it interesting.  Secondly, what they say is relevant to the specific product.  Their napkins don’t say anything about ‘freshness’ because it’s not relevant there. Instead, they talk about sustainability. The third point is that what they write is not just a word or bullet point or catchy phrase. They write out a meaningful, somewhat long paragraph you have to sit down and read to make sense of. It is real content that makes you think.

That last point reminds me of one of the most famous mission statements of all which is the old Johnson & Johnson credo (easily Googled).   The J&J credo cannot be taken in at a glance, it has to be read and it’s not short—it’s just over 300 words. How long is your organization’s mission statement? It took J&J a lot of words to say something they found meaningful. There may be a lesson in that for your company.

Applying These Concepts
Creating blurbs that convey your mission is not expensive but it does require skill and courage.  It takes a skilled writer to craft something interesting and relevant with just the right tone. Fortunately, you probably already have people like that in your marketing department and if not, hiring a good freelance copy writer for a few days is a good alternative. Courage is not available for hire: you have to find it in yourself. If you decide to put an old style mission statement on mugs and posters it won’t accomplish much but no one will question you.  If you do something effective, Pret style, someone is bound to criticize it. It takes courage to break the mould.

Assuming you have the requisite skill and courage, where do you put these little blurbs?  Put them wherever you have done something that is in line with the mission.  If your mission involves innovation, and to encourage that you put a white board in the coffee room, by all means explain what you have done and why with a little blurb beside the white board. If you have chosen peculiar but innovative door handles, put a blurb there.  And of course all the usual reports, handbooks and websites one finds in organizations are places where blurbs may be useful. If your mission is innovation and you can’t think of a single thing that demonstrates an innovative mind-set then you know you have a real problem!

Pret’s website notes their founders had “woefully little experience in the world of business”.  This lack of experience has seemingly served them well.  Too often we mimic common practices even when we know they don’t work well. Let’s think hard about how we communicate mission to our employees, and do it better.

David Creelman is CEO of Creelman Research, providing writing, research and speaking on human-capital management. He works with a variety of academics, think tanks, consultancies and HR vendors in Canada, the U.S., Japan, Europe and China. Creelman can be reached at dcreelman@creelmanresearch.com.