Four meetings and $350,000 wasted on one mission statement

Gigantic Foods can rewrite its mission and vision statements until the cows come home. They won’t say anything worth listening to

Looking at a spiffy four-color monthly magazine put out by Humongous Foods. (A pseudonym. I want to protect the very competent editor, who was obviously ordered by management to run the article I’m going to talk about.) The issue is from almost two years ago; the article is about rewriting the company’s mission and vision statements.

The company is a $5- or $6-billion dollar giant in the food processing industry. It employs more than 17,000 people.

My first question is, Why must companies do things like this?

I’m not talking about printing the non-story about the rewriting of the mission and vision statements. I’m talking about rewriting the damn things in the first place. Why is it necessary for presumably intelligent business people to fool around in this silly, time-wasting, farcical way?

Here’s the draft the 16-person committee came up with for the mission statement: