Mission Statements and Parachutes

A mission statement that is not known by the people (placed on their hearts and heads) is about as useful as a parachute on the first bounce.

We thought it would be intriguing to find out how many people really know their company’s mission statement. Over the past two years, asking people we came in contact with in all parts of our lives has become a norm for us. It’s very hard to serve us food in a restaurant or rent us a car or check us into a hotel without being asked, “What is your company’s mission statement?” We even took it so far as to call companies out of the yellow pages a couple of afternoons to ask the people we got on the phone what their company’s mission statement was. (This was the fun part because at times we posed as a radio deejay or as a braniac professor from Harvard. It was very hard to get people to take us seriously without the ploys!)

Well, throughout this investigative research process, we have come to this conclusion.

More people know the mission statement of Star Trek than know their own company’s mission statement!

(Now there’s a quote for you!) It’s true! We started asking people what the Star Trek mission statement was and they knew it! Oh, please! Don’t sit there reading and try to pretend you are not “boldly going where no man (or woman to be PC) has gone before!” You probably struggled with our first question, “What is your company’s mission statement?” but had no trouble with the Star Trek part. That’s okay if you’re Gene Roddenberry, but it really doesn’t do a whole lot for the profitability or service of your company.

Why do people know the Star Trek mission statement? The main reason people know the Star Trek mission versus their company’s is that they had actually heard the Star Trek one! Our experiences showed employees are never even told the mission statement of the company let alone their mission as a part of the company. Is it any wonder that people will give you only their hands and feet at work? If all I do is wait tables at Red Robin restaurants, then what are my chances that I will make a “happy guest”—which is their product?

Red Robin International is a great example of a company that has tied its mission statement to its marketing. They used to print on the front of every napkin this mission statement: “We create happy guests.” Definitely a page out of the Disney book, but who cares. Steve Udhus, Vice President of Operations for Red Robin says, “There is no set culture that you can go out and buy. But there is a blueprint (roadmap) that you can follow that builds and molds your culture successfully. We studied and benchmarked the best to discover the blueprint, but we had to do the building ourselves. Our culture is unique, distinctive, and of service.” We have found that it works and every employee of Red Robin knows that their job is to create happy guests, whatever it takes.”