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I actually know a little something about corporate mission statements. About a decade ago, my boss at the time was working on a big pharmaceutical merger. He asked me to come up with a this-will-do-for-now mission statement, and I spent about 25 minutes creating some options and zipped it back his way.

Ten years later my words, “help people to do more, feel better and live longer” remain the mission statement of GlaxoSmithKline.

(This remains an enduring mystery to me – why the ‘change management intervention’ that took the least time is the only one I can tangibly point to and say, “Yep, I did that.” Such is life I guess.)

This recent article in Fast Company kicked up the whole conversation again. I certainly agree with their main points – that most mission statements are vague, useless, and have suffered death by lamination.

But they can also be very useful, and in the article Nancy Lubin points to what makes the difference – a goal that’s quantifiable.

How will you know when you’ve done it? What does success really look like? All good questions.

And of course, you don’t need to be a whopping great company to qualify for a mission statement. It works just as well on a personal level.

Here’s mine: “to infect a billion people with the possibility virus.”

I’ve shown you mine. Will you show me yours?

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