This is the mission statement of Lehman Brothers, a global investment bank serving the financial needs of corporations, institutions,governments and high-net-worth investors worldwide:
"We are One Firm, defined by our unwavering commitment to our clients, our shareholders, and each other. Our mission is to build unrivaled partnerships with and value for our clients, through the knowledge, creativity, and dedication of our people, leading to superior returns for our shareholders."
In my mind a sound mission statement should have include the following:
- The firm's purpose & value
- Written in a way that can be easily understood by grandmother.
- Should not take more than 1 minute to read it.
This mission statement surely does meet my requirement of a sound requirement. The states the firm's purpose as well as its value. The mission of statement does not required me to use dictionary.com and I finished reading this mission statement in under minute.
SURPRISE!! I am the CEO and I don't know what's our mission statement!!!
Mission statement can harm a company if its not properly stated or implemented. In an interview by CNN Money's Adam Lashinsky, Fortune senior writer, with Yahoo's former CEO, Terry Semel who was asked what was the company's motto. Terry Semel, five year CEO of Yahoo had no idea what Yahoo's mission of statement was. Terry Semel was replaced by Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo in June of 2007.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/01/technology/pluggedin_lashinsky_yahoo.fortune/index.htm
4 comments:
A+ Buyer!! (inside joke)
Great link Al! I found that hilarous, and I'm sure he's not the only one. Just the first of many suckers out there ready to get knocked out of the leading "teet".
"..leading to superior returns for our shareholders."
I'm sure every i-bank thrives for "superior returns" for their clients.
I agree with your criteria as well. See you this weekend!
Good job Alan.
Since everyone’s so focused on writing about a sound mission statement, it is definitely nice to see that you actually put in the effort to show us something different. The purpose of a mission statement is to guide the company in the right direction. And for Mr. Semel, the previous CEO of Yahoo, to not know the mission statement, it’s definitely not shocking that he was later replaced.
Let’s just hope that Mr. Yang, the new CEO of Yahoo, knows what the mission statement is.
Hey Alan, I agree with you that Lehman Brothers is a great example of a sound mission statement. They definitely have a direction with purpose and can be easily understood by different audience or even ‘Grandmas’. I guess that is the reason they did pretty well last year during the subprime crisis. I was also SURPRISED that a big corporation CEO doesn’t even know how important their mission statement is. Good job, I really enjoy reading your blog!
Lehman Brothers' mission statement really shows a sense of commitment to its target audience. However, I have to say that it doesn't meet the criteria of being easily understood. I'm sure my grandma, or anyone else who doesn't know much about the company, can't tell what the company's main business is from the statement alone.
As for the part regarding Terry Semel, I really liked how it brings something new to this assignment. Yahoo! has been in a series of confusion what what their current and future goals are. I read an article that was published not long after Jerry Yang took over, that the company tries to achieve many things, but lack focus in any of them. I wonder if it's because Yahoo!'s mission statement isn't really giving it much guidance, and for the same reason, Terry Semel didn't even bother looking into it. Or is it the other way around?
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