Do I Need A Mission Statement For My Small Business?

Can having a mission statement put your small business over the success edge? Maybe. The Strategy Planning Institute and Kinetic Wisdom, Inc., developers of the strategic planning tool Mission Expert, announced the results of a study recently completed looking into the correlation between corporate growth, profitability and the existence of a company mission statement. The Sun Online Agency was commissioned to conduct a survey studying Fortune 1000 companies looking for trends over a 1 and 5 year period. The study was conducted through extensive online research along with a number of company interviews. Although 90% of the highest growth companies for 2006 had published mission statements, the most surprising difference was noted while looking at long-term growth over a 5-year period, where 98% of the 50 most profitable Fortune 1000 companies have mission statements in place. The study quantifiably supports what most management consultants and public companies have known all along; Companies that have a long-term vision of their future and a stated mission for their employees grow faster than their peers. With Wells Fargo/US Census Bureau statistics showing that less than half of all small businesses live to see their fifth birthday, the study also suggested that small and midsized businesses should take a queue from their larger public brothers since less than 50% of all small and midsized companies have a public mission statement. To receive a copy of the study, you can go to http://www.missionexpert.com/study where it can be freely downloaded as a pdf file.