I am often annoyed by mis­sion state­ments. I saw one recently that used the non-word “action­ing” and paired it with an insider word of unclear mean­ing and a phrase that used two mul­ti­syl­labic words that are rarely paired together, and served in this exam­ple to fur­ther cloud the mean­ing of the whole thing. In fact, the clear­est thing about the state­ment was the non-word “action­ing.” Doesn’t make for a good ele­va­tor pitch if you ask me.

Once in a group draft­ing their own mis­sion state­ment, I had to fight con­stantly to get the state­ment reworded into the active voice… and most in the group relented with a “what­ever” kind of atti­tude because they sim­ply didn’t get it. I accept that most peo­ple won’t per­ceive this con­sciously, but sub­tle word­ing vari­a­tions leave a sub­con­scious impres­sion which cre­ates a mood or feel­ing toward the per­cep­tion of your mission.