Locally Grown Organic Firewood Mission

Many a time we agonize over a mission statement. We have retreats to establish our mission, vision, and values.  I think the best are to the point.  Locally grown organic firewood. It’s funny isn’t it. That was the sign on the side of the road I passed by.  It could make a pretty good mission statement.  It’s easy to turn it into a mission statement.  TO provide locally grown organic firewood. Sometimes you need to narrow it down to a particular audience and can add the preposition FOR.  To provide locally grown organic firewood for Salem or for tourists.  Add BY and you are done.  To provide locally grown organic firewood for Salem tourists by using sustainable harvesting. 

If you know someone working in a hospital, he or she can probably recite the mission.  It’s on the back of the name tag.  It might read something similar to this: To provide the best health care in Salem Hospital by specializing in big toes.  Adding the BY helps us distinguish ourselves. 

You’ve seen, “To protect and serve” and “Community Policing on police cars.  It turns into a pretty good mission statement “To protect and serve (the for is implied) Salem by using community policing techniques.

That’s how to write a mission in a nutshell.  Start with to.  If you don’t need to add the prepositional statements beginning with for or by, all the better.  Don’t get bogged down in a long one.  No one will remember it and it becomes meaningless to your employees and your clients, participants or citizens.