On a mission

Tom Sanderson
CEO, Transplace Inc.

Have you ever looked at your company’s
mission statement and laughed upon reading it because it seemed so off from what
your company actually does? If so, then
you just failed Tom Sanderson’s laugh test,
and you need a new mission statement. As
chairman, president and CEO of Transplace
Inc., he went through that, and it led to creating a new mission.

One of the keys to remember when creating a new mission statement is length.

“Try to keep it short enough that it will
resonate with people, and they’ll remember
it and the key aspects of it,” Sanderson
says. “If you write too much, you risk having people pick up on the wrong pieces of it
as being the most important elements.”

When creating it, you also need to run it
by other people to see what they think of it.

“Some people are afraid to put that
statement out there and get the feedback
because it might bruise their ego a little bit,”
Sanderson says. “The focus has to be on
how do we get a good statement out there.

I can’t let my thin skin get in the way of a
better product.”

No matter what you decide to do, keep
the long term in mind when crafting your
mission.

“You have to think about what’s right for
your own situation, for your own company,
for your own employee base and leadership
team,” Sanderson says. “A well-crafted
statement should stand the test of time.”