Writing A Personal Mission Statement - Corporate Lesson #1

by Mark McClure -

If you have never written an inspiring and effective personal mission statement but really want to do so, you should aim to build the following 3 qualities into yours: Vision, Focus and Brevity .

In this series of articles I will examine the published mission statements of well known corporations with the above qualities in mind. There is a lot to learn from how professional corporate image and brand builders go about their work.

Also, for a bit of educational fun, I will not name these corporations in the main body of the articles. If their mission statements are concise and relevant you should be able to guess them correctly - the answers for each corporation are at the bottom of the appropriate article. No peeking beforehand!

I used the internet 'wayback' archive machine to look up the mission statement from the year 2002. You can find it at this location: http://www.archive.org/
The August 2007 mission statement was located on the corporation's public website.

1- Corporation 'A'

2002: 'A's mission is to deliver the best search experience on the Internet by making the world's information universally accessible and useful.

2007: 'A's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Now would you say that 'A's mission statement has expanded in scope from the 2002 version? Their business certainly continues to grow and prosper. You may even have used their services to find this article on the Internet!

From a coaching perspective I especially like the 2007 mission statement because they have clearly refined and expanded their vision and focus from that of 5 years ago - and replaced the reference to 'delivering the best search experience' with the visionary challenge of organizing all the world's information!

And their mission statement is also shorter - from an effective 17 to 11 words.
I like 10 words or less - nearly there guys and gals ;-)

When you create your own personal mission statement it is OK to start off with a couple of sentences. Leave it for a few days and then come back and reduce the word count as corporation 'A' has so powerfully done.

Getting it to 10 words or less can be done but may take time as your ideas and copy writing abilities evolve. Allow that to happen.

Start by editing it to 15 words or less - this implies a single sentence, starting with a verb. For example, "Your mission is to..."; and replace 'Your' with your actual name. You can get more detail on how to do this by reading my personal mission statement article.

OK - have you worked out the identity of corporation 'A'?

Answer: This is the mission statement of the Google Corporation. (www.google.com)

If you guessed it right away then that is a compliment to both the branding and the business success of Google Inc.

For more on writing personal mission statements and goals, download my FREE report: "Discover How To Create Incredible Yet Reachable Goals": Goal Setting Report

Read personal development, coaching and goal setting articles here: http://www.goalcreationmaps.com/art

Mark McClure is a Certified Career & Life coach and Internet Business Owner.