What mission are you on?

Just talked to someone who was looking for advice on their mission statement. Not for the company, mind you, but for their department, which was the data warehousing department! Wow, I thought, never heard of individual missions that would go that deep into an organization. Since I find mission statements (and particularly the huge amount of work that goes into finding one) utterly useless, I couldn't help it, but I had to find out what the current state of affairs is in the mission world.

So here are some current statements, picked up from the web, through a quick search, and I didn't concentrate on any industry. Be the judge, whether those make any sense to you, are in alignment with the company's behavior, and are a differentiator for the company.

• Siemens:We will supply our Customers with products and services on time with the highest quality and value. We will accomplish this by our commitment to continuous improvement and by exemplifying fairness and integrity with our customers, our employees, and our suppliers.
• At Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.
  
• As enterprises around the world move to adopt performance management, Cognos will continue to direct our products, support, and services toward helping our customers deliver on its promise.
• BMC: Passion for IT Innovation that benefits our clients' investment in technologies.
• Coca-Cola: To Refresh the World... in body, mind, and spirit. To Inspire Moments of Optimism... through our brands and our actions. To Create Value and Make a Difference... everywhere we engage.
• At Nestlé, we believe that research can help us make better food so that people live a better life.
• BMW Group: To be the most successful premium manufacturer in the industry.
• Smith & Wesson: Safety, Security, Protection and Sport.
• The mission of Merck is to provide society with superior products and services by developing innovations and solutions that improve the quality of life and satisfy customer needs, and to provide employees with meaningful work and advancement opportunities, and investors with a superior rate of return.
  

Aha! Yawn. Mission accomplished.

Joost

OK, I know I haven't been very active on this blog in the recent past. Quite a few have complained that the last post is months old, and I really don't have many excuses, other than that things were really busy over here lately. I wish I could say that I've been watching television most of the time. Not quite, but I wanted to say that this Joost idea is really how TV should be. It's like TVoIP, only that it doesn't include all the basic channels (yet). My daughter would argue, though, that MTV is the only relevant channel anyway. My friend Marc sent me an invite to the Joost community, a quick install (on a decent machine, better have lots of graphics memory!) and you can view channels that you have never heard of. How about an Italian soccer channel that shows a program with (what they call) the 200 best goals ever. Includes old footage of Gerd Müller at the 1974 World Cup. Funny stuff. If you are more into boxing or indycar racing (I'm not), they've got you covered.

If you would like an invite, drop me a line. In the meantime, I'm working on some musical tracks, that I'll post here soon. Stay tuned, through video, audio, or otherwise.

What's Joost, Quicktime (9.79 MB)