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I think you have missed the point of a mission statement. A mission statement is meant to guide participants the decision-making process, not to impress customers. However, you are certainly correct in your assessment that a mission statement which is meaningless to the workers is as useful as no mission statement at all.
RMP
Rebecca M. Phillips
Documentation Manager
Qronus Interactive Ltd.
rebecca -at- qronus -dot- co -dot- il
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From: Matthew Danda[SMTP:dandam -at- 1STNET -dot- NET]
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 1996 9:58 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L
Subject: Project Mission Statement
While helping to put together a Project Notebook for our development
group, we encountered a slot in the introduction section for a "Project
Mission Statement." Now, since this Notebook is a document designed to track
development decisions, and will not be shown to clients or anyone outside
the company, we couldn't figure out why we had to write a Mission Statement
(other that the fact that, well, we paid a lot of money to consultants who
told us to write one). So I, having just finished reading "The Dilbert
Principle," volunteered to spit out a mission statement, and submitted the
following to the project manager:
Project mission statement
We will be striving to create the best possible computerized <snip> system
to meet the needs of our customers. To fully realize our strong commitment
to total quality management, we will be developing our product using
leading-edge tools and methodologies. This development paradigm matched with
our strong customer-focus provide an optimal environment to achieve this goal.
I also included a disclaimer that this statement was not entirely serious,
and that I had intentionally used words like "paradigm" and "customer-focus"
and "total quality" in order to sound more like a "Mission Statement."
Well, unfortunately, the project manager read it and said it was okay, and
this has now been placed in our official Project Notebook.
Oh well.
Matthew Danda
Technical Writer
St. Louis, MO
dandam -at- 1stnet -dot- net
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