If, like me, you think that Company Mission Statements are often not worth the fancy cards they are embossed you should take a look at Dilbert’s Automatic Mission Statement Generator (unfortunately no longer available online). It looks like many of our major enterprises and public organizations have used it already!
Heres 3 examples of the great work Dilbert’s MSG automatically produces:
“We have committed to synergistically fashion high-quality products so that we may collaboratively provide access to inexpensive leadership skills in order to solve business problems”
“It is our job to continually foster world-class infrastructures as well as to quickly create principle-centered sources to meet our customer’s needs”
“Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound methods of empowerment so that we may continually negotiate performance based infrastructures”
Strangely these look worryingly familiar so it would be fun to create a list of 3 real MS and jumble them up with the 3 MS generated by Dilbert above to see if anyone could actually tell the difference!
So dear reader I challenge you to send me the 3 most buzzword-loaded generically-meaningless genuine Mission Statements from real organizations you can find so we can do that experiment.
Thanks To Peter Fryer for spotting this beauty!
Ken is an expert practitioner, author and speaker on Collaboration, High Performing Teams, Change Management, Business Strategy and Leadership Development.
The mission statement seems very interesting, social and challenging. The empowerment and the world class infrastructures just made it perfect.
Actually, if you read them carefully and with a degree of acceptance of a generator’s average skills in English, those mission statements are actually meaningful and certainly not as ambiguous as many `real-world` mission statements.
Such as, rather famously,
“The New Ventures Mission is to scout profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission inclusive markets, and explore new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the findings.”
Hi Lev
Thanks for a great comment which I totally agree with.
Sometimes when I am driving I go past a vermin exterminators office under the title “Commercial Hygiene and Health Solutions” and the local refuse disposal company working as “The Environmental Systems Management Company” and wonder when was it that business branding consultants totally lost the plot.
Many Thanks
KEN
Spain’s ESADE Business School also has a mission statement that reads like a pile of shit but then that is in keeping with the institution!