Your Mission: Impossible If You Fail to Define It

A good mission statement is a written, easy-to-remember sentence, a short list of bullet points, or a paragraph illustrating your business’s goals and purpose in life. Or, as coauthor Jim believes, it’s what makes your company special. Mission statements come in many sizes, shapes, and forms, but they all have one common purpose: to guide you and your employees in making the critical decisions that affect your company’s direction. Additionally, your mission statement should identify your company to outsiders — your customers, your vendors, the media, and others.

To give you an idea of how well-developed mission statements identify the businesses behind them, try to match the following companies with their mission statements (well, if these aren’t their official mission statements, we think they ought to be):