If they’re memorable & livable, yes

A mission statement may seem like high-altitude bullshit that’s disconnected from the day job. But if thoughtfully crafted, a mission statement can help act as a north star for everything that you do, and galvanize your entire team into doing it.

There are two broad ways to go with this. A pithy, concise one-liner, or something more fleshed-out and deliberate. Both have their advantages. A succinct one-liner has a way of seeping into the brains of the entire team, no matter how large it becomes. It becomes a simple mantra, and if the company remains true to it, it can be hugely unifying. More detailed mission statements can be useful as more specific pointers but run the risk of being less broadly applicable.

Let’s take a few examples.

“Putting Smiles on People’s Faces” — WWE Mission statement

This may seem hilarious for a brand whose stock-in-trade is a violent spectacle, but WWE’s super-simple mission statement is a reminder that WWE provides escapism to the consumer, and that it pivoted away from no-holds-barred blood-and-guts combat to a brand safe, somewhat sanitized athletic spectacle. The mission statement rings true for how its various teams devise customer experiences, merchandise, and even how they write and script their story arcs and shows.

Walk the halls of WWE and ask anyone on the team about their work, and they’re likely to parrot this mantra back to you. It is often-repeated, never forgotten, and has buy-in in all corners of the business.

“Make Journalism Worth Paying For” — New York Times mission statement

Another super simple, completely memorable mission statement. If you know the NYT, you know that the phrase ‘All the news that’s fit to print’ has been printed on the masthead since the late 1800s. This new internal mantra was rolled out to the team in 2015 after the NYT published a huge innovation report, preparing the entire organization to rebuild for a new digital future. (It’s here).

If you’re a journalist, it tells you this the Times a place for you to do your best work. For everyone else on the team, the ‘worth paying for’ really hints at building a sustainable, compelling business, in a sector where the internet conditioned people to expect the news for free. The NYT wanted to set itself apart as being more valuable, more useful to the reader.

As the NYT invested in buying games like Wordle, sites like Wirecutter, creating cooking & games apps and bolting all of these on to the traditional journalism business, all of them add to the value of the core brand – the journalism the NYT is known for – and make it worth paying for. Seven years since they declared it, they’re delivering on that new mission. The Times now has more than 9 million digital subscribers, up from one million in 2014 when this mission statement was first coined.

Let’s look at a longer one.

“Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” — Patagonia mission statement

Apparel brand Patagonia has evolved to become synonymous with durability and sustainability, and its more deliberate mission statement breaks into three neat pieces, all of which reinforce each other. They’ve lived this mission by championing the use of sustainable materials, urging their customers to repair clothing rather than replace, and pass on rather than buying anew. This emerges in all aspets of their business, as well as their content strategy backing their Worn Wear initiative, for example.

Arguably, that ‘buy better, but buy less’ mentality could translate into their customers buy fewer items. They famously stopped embroidering logos on their gear for corporate customers, cutting off a non-trivial revenue stream, arguing that it made the clothes less likely to be regifted or passed on. But for customers who identify with the mission, they’re likely to be more loyal to the brand and have a longer relationship with them. Patagonia expresses its confidence in that concept by doing things like taking out a Black Friday ad urging people not to buy a fleece from them. And there’s no doubt that Patagonia’s teams, many years on, are all-in on the mission.