Say It and Live It The 50 Corporate Mission Statements that Hit the Mark

by Jones, Patricia; Kahaner, Larry

• ISBN13: 9780385476300
• ISBN10: 0385476302
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-04-01
• Publisher: Currency

Summary

Say It And Live Itis the first collection of provocative, passionate, and intelligent corporate mission statements -- the most powerful and popular managerial tool in business today. A corporate mission statement is the most dramatic presentation of a company's vision and its goal. No other document -- annual report, press release, news article, statement from the board of directors -- tells us more about a company's values and ethics than a mission statement. Companies know that if they write it down, they will have to live up to it -- so they devote months, even years, the energy of people from the CEO on down, and significant sums of money to crafting them.Say It And Live Itis the only source of information for the many business people who are presently writing their own mission statements. In it, authors Patricia Jones and Larry Kahaner show that industry leaders are frequently corporations that truly live their mission statements. Some of the winners include: Avis, Ben & Jerry's, Boeing, Citicorp, General Electric, Gillette, Hallmark Cards, IBM, Kellogg's, Reader's Digest, Saturn, Southwest Airlines, UPS, and Xerox.Say It And Live Itis a collection of the fifty best corporate mission statements in America. Each entry consists of the company's complete mission statement, along with an explanation of how it was written, a lesson about how that mission statement saved the company or motivated employees, or comments from the CEO or the president. The introduction points out the common elements of these philosophical documents, while the final chapter is a list of tips on how you can write your own mission statement.

Table of Contents

Road Maps for the High Road	ix
AT&T	1	(6)
Hanna Andersson	7	(5)
Avis	12	(5)
Barrick	17	(5)
Ben & Jerry's	22	(4)
Binney & Smith	26	(7)
Boeing	33	(6)
Boston Beer Company	39	(5)
Leo Burnett	44	(5)
Campbell & Ferrara Nurseries	49	(4)
Celestial Seasonings	53	(5)
Trammell Crow Company	58	(5)
Dayton Hudson Corporation	63	(6)
Delta Air Lines	69	(8)
Gannett	77	(7)
Geico	84	(5)
General Electric	89	(4)
General Mills	93	(6)
Georgia-Pacific	99	(5)
Gerber	104	(4)
Gillette	108	(5)
Goodyear	113	(4)
Hallmark	117	(4)
Honda of America	121	(4)
IBM	125	(5)
Intel	130	(5)
Johnson & Johnson	135	(5)
Mary Kay Cosmetics Inc.	140	(5)
Kellogg	145	(7)
Arthur D. Little	152	(5)
Lowe's	157	(5)
Marriott	162	(5)
Merck & Co.	167	(5)
Motorola	172	(5)
Northwestern Mutual Life	177	(4)
The Park Lane Group	181	(5)
J. C. Penney	186	(4)
Reader's Digest	190	(4)
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company	194	(5)
Saturn	199	(7)
J. M. Smucker Company	206	(6)
The Southland Corporation	212	(6)
Southwest Airlines	218	(4)
Steelcase	222	(5)
Levi Strauss & Co.	227	(9)
Tom's of Maine	236	(5)
Twentieth Century Investors	241	(4)
United Parcel Service	245	(4)
Worthington Industries	249	(6)
Xerox	255	(7)
Six Rules for Writing and Implementing Your Own Mission Statement	262