A good mission statement can help a company succeed and grow. Learn how a mission statement benefits a company’s customers, employees and owners.
I think every company — let me repeat, EVERY company — stands to benefit from creating and promoting a good vision for what that company wants to become. It’s easy for a company president or CEO to know what he/she wants for the business, but how do you effectively communicate that vision to your entire workforce in a strong, united manner?
That’s where the mission statement comes in. We’ve all heard of it, but what is a mission statement, exactly? According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, “a mission statement should explain what the company does for each of the three main stakeholders: customers, employees and owners.”
I’d like to cover each of these three stakeholder types, in terms of how a mission statement can be used to help each group know and act upon what is best for the company. I’ll use CleanTelligent as an example, so you can take what I say and apply it to your own company as you look to unite your company with a solid mission statement.
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Customers: CleanTelligent’s mission statement is “innovating smarter solutions for building and preserving success.” We came up with this because our ultimate goal for our own customers is to build and preserve success in the short- and long-term.
In order to reach this objective, we felt the best way to do this would be to constantly look for new tools and methods to better the way that building service contractors and facility managers can use CleanTelligent. One way that we have implemented this is by always looking for opportunities to ask our customers “what would make CleanTelligent better?” Many of our innovations have come from ideas by our customers, and we know that this trend will continue because of the focus that our mission statement provides.
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Employees: As a member of the Sales & Marketing team, I know what my goal is because of our mission statement. My goal isn’t to persuade businesses to buy janitorial bidding software, without caring about whether CleanTelligent would be a good fit for them. My goal is to find those who would actually benefit from CleanTelligent, then explain the benefits of the software so they can make the decision for themselves.
By building relationships with the right people, my company can grow because those who use CleanTelligent are the ones who will actually want to use it in the long-term. This example of getting direction from the mission statement helps our employees in multiple ways. For one, the goal of innovation keeps us on our toes as we consistently look for ways to improve the software for cleaning businesses. The objective of “building and preserving success” can also clearly apply to CleanTelligent as well, not just our clients. What is best for the overall health and growth of our company is now something that each of our employees seeks on a regular basis.
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Owners: Creation of a mission statement comes when ownership or management comes together to decide on what their vision of the company should be. As such, management plays an integral role in how a mission statement is interpreted and carried out by the rest of the company.
I’ve heard that the best way to fully learn something is to teach it to others, and I think that this is no exception. Properly communicating the meaning of a mission statement not only helps the workforce understand what ownership has in mind, but it also helps management thoroughly understand how it applies to everyone, including themselves.
Ideas for new cleaning management software developments may come from other sources, such as employees or customers, but ultimately the decision of “what changes should we actually make” is made by management. A proper understanding of CleanTelligent’s mission statement has allowed our management team to sift through the many suggestions and clearly perceive which changes would be most beneficial for the growth of CleanTelligent and its customers in the long-term.
A solid mission statement provides a great peek into what the company is about, why they do what they do and how they intend to build and excel in the future. At CleanTelligent, as mentioned earlier, our mission statement is “innovating smarter solutions for building and preserving success.” Our management team knows it, our employees know it, and because our customers also know it, all three stakeholders reap the benefits.