Humorous Aside 2

[MasterRacker]

I will soon be spending some time developing a demonstration website to use as a test-out for a HTML class. The site will be an intranet for a fictitious company. My former employer had a number of Mission, Vision, etc. statements. I've modifed them a little and come up with a couple of my own as rought drafts. I figured I'd throw them out here for a little fun and input to make them as serious sounding but nonsensical as possible. Here's the initial draft:
-------------------------------------------------
Mission Statement
XXX. Inc. will be a fast growing company, exceeding customer expectations by demonstrating a superior ability to lower their expectations while conducting business with the highest degree of integrity. Success will be measured by the amount of money in the owners bank account.

Vision Statement
The vision for our future is a strong, solid, well managed, fast growing, exciting, innovative, energized company with
high business ethics and an excellent reputation that can exponentially expand the owners bank account.

Business Concept
XXX, Inc. will exceed the needs of customers seeking technology-based performance improvement through the development of products that enhance productivity, quality, and/or improve the environment, in a way that increases the size of the owners bank account.

Strategic Intent
It is our strategic intent to maximize financial returns by pursuing opportunities that enhance and leverage our existing strengths.

Quality Statement
XXX, Inc. will produce products that exceed customers expectations, while maintaining maximum profit, by minimizing service through designed-in limitations on product life.
-------------------------------------------------------

Feel free to suggest more statements also, the more the merrier. ;-)


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[DrJavaJoe]

Punch line cannot be 'the owners bank account' 3 times. Try crush the competion, owners bottoms line, instill terror, etc.

 

[jsteph]

But in reality, the statement "success will be measured by...the owners bank account" is not only true, but it's just and right and really shouldn't be considered humorous or jestful--it is entirely in keeping with Adam Smith and all of capitalism and business 101:

First question for business 101: What is the #1 reason for existence of a company?

Answer: To make a profit for the owners.

--jsteph

 

[chiph]

Of course, like jsteph says, that *is* the point of being in business. In reality, most people don't really get it.

The "increase the size of the owner's bank account" line would be funnier if *every* point ended in that exact same phrase. The joke would then be funny on two levels - the people who don't understand this truism laugh at the simple repetition. Those who do understand, laugh at the people in the room who don't get it.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[sleipnir214]

I am reminded of a business plan created by one of the characters in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. The business plan described as being of the form:

[ignore]MISSION: At [name of company] it is out conviction that [to do the stuff we want to do] and to increase shareholder value are not merely complementary activities -- they are inextricably linked.

PURPOSE: To increase shareholder value by [doing stuff]

EXTREMELY SERIOUS WARNING (printed on a separate page, in red letters on a yellow background): Unless you are as smart as Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, savvy as a half-blind Calcutta bootblack, tough as General William Tecumseh Sherman, rich as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red Sox fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the average nuclear missile submarine commander, you should never have been allowed anywhere near this document. Please dispose of it as you would any piece of high-level radioactive waste and then arrange with a qualified surgeon to amputate your arms at the elbows and gouge your eyes from their sockets. This warning is necessary because once, a hundred years ago, a little old lady from Kentucky put a hundred dollars into a dry-goods company which went belly-up and only returned her ninety-seven dollars. Ever since then the government has been on our asses. If you ignore this warning, read on at your peril – you are dead certain to lose everything you’ve got and live out your final decades beating back waves of termites in a Mississippi Delta leper colony.

Still reading? Great. Now that we’ve scared off the lightweights, let’s get down to business.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: We will raise [some money], then [do some stuff] and increase shareholder value. Want details? Read on.

INTRODUCTION: [This trend], which everyone knows about, and [that trend], which is so incredibly arcane that you probably didn’t know about it until just now, and [this other trend over here] which might seem, at first blush, to be completely unrelated, when all taken together, lead us to the (proprietary, secret, heavily patented, trademarked, and NDAed) insight that we could increase shareholder value by [doing stuff]. We will need $ [a large number] and after [not too long] we will be able to realize an increase in value to $ [an even larger number], unless [hell freezes over in mid-summer].

DETAILS:
Phase 1: After taking vows of celibacy and abstinence and forgoing all our material possessions for homespun robes, we (viz. appended resumes) will move into a modest complex of scavenged refrigerator boxes in the central Gobi Desert, where real estate is so cheap that we are actually being paid to occupy it, thereby increasing shareholder value even before we have actually done anything. On a daily ration consisting of a handful of uncooked rice and a ladleful of water, we will begin [to do some stuff].
Phase 2, 3, 4, . . ., n-1: We will [do more stuff, steadily enhancing shareholder value in the process] unless [the earth is struck by an asteroid a thousand miles in diameter, in which case certain assumptions will have to be readjusted; refer to Spreadsheets 397-413].
Phase n: Before the ink on our Nobel Prize certificates is dry, we will confiscate the property of our competitors, including anyone foolish enough to have invested in their pathetic companies. We will sell all these people into slavery. All proceeds will be redistributed among our shareholders, who will hardly notice, since Spreadsheet 265 demonstrates that, by this time, the company will be larger than the British Empire at its zenith.

SPREADSHEETS: [Pages and pages of numbers in tiny print, conveniently summarized by graphs that all seem to be exponential curves screaming heavenward, albeit with enough pseudo-random noise in them to lend plausibility.]

RESUMES: Just recall the opening reel of “The Magnificent Seven” and you won’t have to bother with this part; you should crawl to us on your hands and knees and beg us for the privilege of paying our salaries.[/ignore]


This is from pp 238-240 of Cryptonomicon[/u], copyright 1999 by Neal Stephenson. Published May 1999 by Avon Books, Inc., New York, NY. First edition, 10th printing.

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TANSTAAFL!!

 

[MasterRacker]

jsteph -
You're missing the point. Everyone knows that the mission of a for-profit company is to make money. In a bad company

that profit all goes to the owners. In a good one, some of it goes to the employees through generous bonuses and raises,

some goes to research, etc. The question then is, since the mission to make money is self evident, why do companies make

these pompous, ridiculous statements? Executives spend weeks, agonizing over the exact wording, then blow a day to call

everyone together to make a presentation on exactly what the mission is. So what's accomplished by all of this?

I can maybe see making one statement to clarify how we in particular are going to make profit and maybe an objective to

identify market segment, but then what happens when you make multiple, overlapping statements? Scott Adams in the

Dilbert Principle captured it. (I've lent my copy out so I can't quote exactly.) His take is if you have both a Mision

and Vision statement, get your resume ready because the company is doomed. Employees will never know on any given day if

they're supposed to be doing "Vision" things or "Mission" things. Total confusion.

Management should have better things to do than make redundant pronouncements about the obvious. That's the point of the

humor and that's why I'd like to think up even more statments.

I did consider going the other way too. Mission: To lose money as fast as possible, bilk the shareholders out

maximum wealth, and spend 10 years in federal prison on fraud charges. Vision: become a former prosecutor and

make enormous wealth through frequent appearances on Larry King Live...

Sleipnir's excerpt shows that Neal Stephenson get's it (I've never read that book although I've meant to for quite a

while.)

chiph, DrJavaJoe, I'm waffling on your two variations of endings. That one's a tug-of-war between trying to sound authentic and pure humor.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[chiph]

The question then is, since the mission to make money is self evident, why do companies make these pompous, ridiculous statements?

These statements get made when a company is first being formed, and they want someone (Venture capitalist, Angel investor, etc) to give them money. If I were an investor, there's no way I'd give money to someone who didn't have a plan for getting it back to me (and more!).

You might also hear it once a company is ready to go public. Again, the audience isn't the internal employees, but potential investors.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[MasterRacker]

I respectfully, partially disagree. I've been to a number of presentations both by my company and our parent company that went into great detail explaining a number of statements to the internal employees. I've heard of it happening elsewhere from a number of people, so at least part of the audience is intended to be internal.

I've also heard it stated that no mission statement should be over 35 words. If I were a venture capitalist, I would want a lot more detail than that. I would want a full business plan, executive histories, etc.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[MasterRacker]

Woops, posted too fast. I also meant to say that these types of short statements have their uses but they tend to get taken farr too seriously. To anthropomorphize, I would say that they tend bask in the glow of their own, overblown self-importance. (Which is why I want to make fun of them...)


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[Golom]

I once worked for a very touchy-feely company and sat in on a presentation by the president. He said, in part "... Why are we in business? That's easy! We're in business to make money." I mentally filed that under "Well ... Duh" and thought no more of it until I was in another meeting a month or so later in which the participants were involved in some naval gazing and the question came up "Why are we in business?"

"That's easy", quoth I, "Our president says that we're in business to make money."

To my astonishment there were cries of disagreement that ranged from thinly veiled innuendo that I was outright lying or I misunderstood him to I had taken him out of context.

After all we must be in business to improve the environment or involve our stakeholders or be good corporate citizens or value our employees, etc.

The company lost several million dollars that year and the next year there was a major blood letting that replaced most of those people with ones who did indeed understand that we were in business to make money.

 

[MasterRacker]

OK, I'll buy that some people need the obvious explained to them. Does that excuse the flowery language? I've watched people literally strain over getting just the right words in. If the people in this forum can't agree on what and who these statements for, will any two people reading one get exactly the same meaning out if it?

One of my favorites is "exceed customers expectations". Everyone says they're doing this. If the customers expectations are ridiculous, are you really going to bankrupt the company by trying top exceed them?

Fools blindly bid to meet unrealistic expectations, then lose money and good will because they can't. Smart people bid something realistic, convince the customer that's what they really need, meet their expectations and leave them happy. If the customer won't buy it, you're still better off because you aren't going to lose money on them.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[chiph]

If I were a venture capitalist, I would want a lot more detail than that. I would want a full business plan, executive histories, etc.

I've heard two conflicting stories on this. On the one hand - you want the investors to have as much detail as they want ("meeting expectations&quot. On the other hand, I've heard that you need to keep things short & simple to avoid boring them. Which way is correct? I have no idea. Probably why there are such things as "executive summaries" -- to keep it simple for the PHB's.

CajunCenturion has a good point too. In a previous job, we had a problem in the code that wasn't going to be fixed anytime soon (fixing it would have thrown off development schedules that our other 99 customers were depending on). We gave them a workaround (which would require some coding on their side), explained the situation, but they still weren't happy. We ended up paying for a contractor to write their side of the workaround code, as it was cheaper than having the issue grind away at our relationship. But from then on we had to make sure that we managed their expectations correctly -- we didn't want them viewing us as pushovers or a gravy-train.

Because.... we [do stuff] to increase shareholder value!

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[MasterRacker]

This is getting way off-topic, but is also turning into a good discussion.

Chip, a detailed business plan would usually start off with an executive summary. I would imaging that a good VC would decide he likes the summary and would then pass off the detailed plan to his own analysts to help with the final decision.

I think "exceed customer expectations" is an outgrowth of the TQM craze. One of the tenets of classic TQM is "100% conformance to customer expectations, 100% of the time." At some point in time, some bright boy decided to go one better and exceed expectations. So now we have a situation where one of TQM's fundamental flaws is magnified.

TQM starts right out by expecting perfection, which is not achievable by any of us because we're all human (I hope). Personally, I believe in striving for excellence rather than perfection. The other flaw in TQM is that there is no room to manage customer expectations (or just plain walk away from something dangerously unachievable).

Many executive "visionaries" don't see this. They just see the flowery language and think they should work it into their various statements of purpose. (I also think that some of the wording is chosen purely to make the author sound more intellectual and visionary.)


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[CajunCenturion]

or think that such wording is motivational.

I think you're right about TQM.

Managing customer expectations is, at least from my experience, one of the most overlooked aspects of Project Management. It's also one of the most important.

The other things, which you've already alluded to, is that suppliers/vendors have a real hard time saying "no". We won't do that for this price. Way too much "yes I know, but we'll make it up in Phase II". They haven't seemed to figure out that you can't make it up in Phase II because you've already set the expectation level in Phase I.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[MasterRacker]

Thanks, I'm glad I'm not alone.

It's not just suppliers/vendors. Too often, the problem extends to dealing with internal customers. Goals are set by the visionaries, who consider the actual implementation to be nothing more than details. The IT/development groups are just a bunch of "plumbers".

If an implementor tries to manage expectations and tone things down, they are branded as stubborn or "uncooperative". TQM is the big stick that is used to beat everyone else into yes-men, hence "death-march" projects.

[red][Way too much "yes I know, but we'll make it up in Phase II"][/red]
In the history of my last employer, I can't even count how many money losing projects we knowingly took on to "get our foot in the door". We were going to make it up on follow-up business that either never materialized or, like you mentioned, we were unable to price properly because of the initial job.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[Tarwn]

wow, and I made up our company plan and such merely as space fillers on our website...maybe I should go back and put some thought into it (considering how long thias thread is getting)

-T

_{01000111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100110 01100110 01100101 01100101 00111111}
The never-completed website:

http://www.tiernok.com/

 

[RoguePoet01]

TQM is nothing but propaganda and corporate indoctrination.

 

[jsteph]

A lot of the time, TQM--and the decision whether or not to adopt it and to what level--is based on the company's decision of where they want to stand in the market place:

Group 1. Low-price Low-Quality volume supplier. There is a market for this and there always will be.

Group 2. Medium-price decent-quality supplier. Again, always a market.

Group 3. High-price High-quality. This market of course will always exist, but during economic slowdowns the market share here bleeds off into group 1 or 2 and vice/versa.

That's basically it. You choose where you will stand because if you don't the market will choose for you--ie if your quality sucks, you might get away with higher prices for a while with slick marketing, but eventually you will be forced down a notch or two. If you produce in high-quality, you can try to sell at low price, but eventually you will be forced to charge higher prices because you simply can't get something for nothing, and your profits will erode if you don't (even with high-volume sales).

So the mission statements can be:
1. We're going to produce sh$# and peddle it in volume to the market that just can't afford anything better, or concisely: "Get it out the door"

2. We're going to produce a decent mainstream product and battle it out in the middle ground for the market share with others like us--because what we have will be basically a commodity (regardless of branding) or: "Don't kill yourself over a few bad apples"

3. We're going to recognize there is a market where people will spend more for something a cut above, and adjust our production to achieve that quality. or: "Get it right the first time"

Either of these generalities are acheivable but the companies must commit to one of them, and not try to fool themselves or the public that they can sell top quality at bargain prices. I just can't happen, yet I've seen mission statements on the walls (one that sticks out was a company that made private-labeled popsicle type treats) that droned on and on about 'achieving the highest quality through teamwork...blah, blah...' This was sugar water and they were the low-priced no-frills supplier. Mission statements like that in a lower-rung company either confuse the people who want to believe in these things, or else it just hardens and further cynicizes (new word) people who already suspected that such things are a line of crap.
--Jsteph

 

[MasterRacker]

Jsteph, I assume you believe TQM actually works and gets you in group 3. I think that's pretty rare. TQM has some good ideas buried in it, but more often than not it doesn't work. Some of it's basic tenets are flawed and in practice it fails far more often than it succeeds. It pretends to empower the rank and file employees, but in reality steals power from them.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[RoguePoet01]

I had two experiences with TQM, both within the same company.

The first was an insult. To gather engineers, programmers, and project managers together in a room, on our own time, and then to force us to watch some assinine videos and give us a few patronizing lectures...all I can say is that everyone was ticked-off by the time it was over.

The second took place on an ANG base, and it it was blatant propaganda. We had to watch a video that ridiculed the French, the Germans, and the Japanese while it vaunted that good old, loveably imperfect, American know-how.

What made me sick at the second TQM was the sight of all the idiots in the room, who were swallowing that crap whole, and with a smile on their faces.

I don't doubt that there are some real TQM programs that do work, or at least could work, but the two that I was exposed to amounted to this: smile, nod your head and agree, give management the answers they want, or else.