Mission Statement

• What do you think a ‘mission statement is’

and how is it related to strategy?
 Mission statement
• Mission: why you do what you do; the
company’s reason for being, its purpose, in the
end, what you want to be remembered for.
• Changing the mission or creating a company’s
first mission statement is a process of
gathering ideas and suggestions for the
mission and putting them in a short, sharply
focused phrase that meets specific criteria.
 Mission Statement
• Peter Drucker says the mission should fit into a T-
shirt; yet a mission statement is not a slogan. It is a
precise statement of purpose. Words should be
chosen for their meaning rather than beauty, for
clarity over cleverness.
• The best mission statements are plain speech with
no technical jargon; like the mission statement of
the International Red Cross: ‘To serve the most
vulnerable’. The power of the statement comes from
its brievety and simplicity
Match the parts of the mission statements to the companies on
the list. Which ones seem the best/worst/most creative/(in)sincere
a.To fight poverty and improve the
• living standards of people in the
1.Avis developing world.
• 2.Avon b.To grow more rapidly than our
• 3.Kodak competitors by providing customers
with the solutions they need to
• 4.International capture, store, process, and
Committee of the Red communicate images, anywhere,
any time
Cross
c.We try harder
• 5.World Bank d.To provide the lives and dignity of
victims of war and internal violence
and to provide them with
assistance.
e.To be the global beauty leader
 Answer key
1.C
2.E
3.B
4.D
5.A
 Mission Statement
• Imagine you own a company. With your
partners (managers) try to develop a mission
statement for it.
• Reason and purpose
• Simple and clear words
 Strategies: short and long term
Short-Term Decision Long-Term Decision
Appointment of UK Marketing Development of international team
Manager Option 1
Option 1 Internal training
Mary Walters Five years to develop a team
Exchange personnel
Safe decision
………………………
Option 2
……………………
……………………
Option 2
……………………. ……………………….
Resignation of Doug and Wayne? ………………………
Decision: Appointment of Decision:
………………………. ……………………………………….
 Strategies: Short and Long-term
• You read about a decision-making meeting.
How effective do you think it was? How would
you run a decision-making meeting?
Vocabulary From the Text: match with the opposite:
take three words and use them in different sentences
a.Unimportant 1.Overstate
b.Conformist 2.Major
c.long-term 3.Vital
d.Unexpected 4.home-grown
e.Superfical 5.short-term
f.Understate 6.Genuine
g.Minor 7.Maverick
h.external 8.Obvious
 Answer key
• A.3
• B.7
• C.5
• D.8
• E.6
• F.1
• G.2
• H.4
Group Work: Discuss the options and possible results in
the two situations described.

1. Your company wants to enter a new foreign market.

There are several ways it could do this:
-start a subsidiary/branch
-find a joint-venture partner
-export directly using the existing sales staff
-find a local agent to represent your company
2. Your company has invested heavily in a joint-venture in a
developing country. The local side of the joint-venture
has broken the contract and set up an independent
company taking all your customers with them.
Watch the video and answer the questions

1.What is strategy?
2.What are the boundaries of strategy making
and how are they related to each other?