Ainda a redacção de declarações de missão

Para os envolvidos recentemente em discussões sobre o conteúdo das missões, aqui vão alguns conselhos de Thomas McLaughlin no livro “Non Strategic Positioning – Decide Where to Be, Plan What to Do”:

“If your mission cannot be written comfortably on the back of a business card, it is too long."
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“Most of us can only hold up to about seven variables in our mind at any one time. Mission statements violate the Deli Principle when they have an excessive number of variables.”
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“How do you simplify a mission statement? One place to start is by getting rid of extra adverbs. Adverbs tell how one does something, which is usually superfluous in a mission statement because it should concentrate on describing what one plans to do. In fact, process-related information is not typically helpful in a mission statement at all. The fact that your organization intends to carry out its mission “enthusiastically” is of no interest to most people.
Another candidate for elimination is adjectives. Our perennial favorite adjective for deletion is the adjective quality, as in “we deliver high-quality services …” Is it really necessary to say this? Can we not just take it for granted that that is what you intend to do? Whoever would say they intend to deliver mediocre services, anyway?”
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“Another way to improve the mission statement is to write it in the active voice. The passive voice is always a bit stilted and distancing. Saying “our clients will be given…” instead of “we will give our clients…” subtly suggests passivity and reactive thinking. The cooling effect of the passive voice dilutes a mission statement’s power.”
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“Strategy is about making choices, and so are mission statements. Trying to make the mission statement do too much is a sure way of making it do too little. So is making the mission statement speak only about process, which is the surest way to create an insipid mission statement. In the end, no one cares very much about the precise way you are going to go about serving your mission, and over time it will probably change anyway.”
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“Lose the jargon and the highly technical references. Forget the clichés.”