CHAPTER 1

Mission Statement is a Must for Survival

Mission statements are among the most blatant and common means that organizations use to substitute talk for action.

—Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, The Knowledge-doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action

Know thyself.

—Ancient Greek inscription, forecourt of Delphi Oracle

A widely held belief is that every organization, large and small, must have a mission statement. Conventional business wisdom tells us that success will elude an organization without a well-articulated beacon of prose to guide it forward. How else are employees, customers, investors, community stakeholders, media outlets, and suppliers supposed to know what business you are in without a clearly defined mission ...

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