Why Employees Ignore Your Mission Statement

Most mission statements sound great in the boardroom and die a slow death in the break room.

In this episode of The Business Fix, Chrissy and Josh break down why employees don’t buy into most mission statements or core values and why so many of them end up as nothing more than corporate wallpaper. They unpack the real reasons mission statements fail, how leadership behavior destroys credibility, and why employees care a whole lot more about what leaders do than what’s printed on a poster.

You’ll hear the difference between a mission that guides behavior and one that just looks pretty on the wall. Chrissy introduces the Three A’s of a Dead Mission Statement: Authenticity, Alignment, and Application, while Josh explains how to make a mission operational instead of ornamental. Together, they show business owners and managers how to connect the company mission to daily work, hiring, accountability, customer experience, and team engagement.

They also dig into the gap between marketing promises and operational reality, why simple beats clever every time, and how to build a mission employees can actually remember, repeat, and believe in. Along the way, they call out fluffy corporate language, share examples from major brands, and give practical ways to test whether your mission statement is helping your culture—or quietly hurting it.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  Why employees ignore mission statements that feel fake 
•  How leadership behavior shapes buy-in more than words 
•  The Three A’s: Authenticity, Alignment, and Application 
•  The Three T’s: Translate, Tie, and Teach 
•  Why “simple, specific, and shared” beats polished fluff 
•  How to audit whether your mission actually affects decisions 
•  Why internal communication has to come before external marketing 

If your mission statement wouldn’t survive the coffee shop test, this episode is for you.

If you're looking to get help with your culture, or to help out an entire group, reach out to Josh and Chrissy today!  We would love to see how we can help you, your business, or your event. Contact us!

ClarityHR is your fractional HR team, giving you real people, real support, and real solutions. Whether it’s compliance headaches, hiring struggles, or just needing someone to take the people stuff off your plate — we’ve got your back. So if you’re ready to stop using duct-tape and hope as your HR strategy and finally get some peace of mind, head over to ClarityHR.com

If you're looking to start your own podcast or maybe you just want to add the next level of professionalism to your podcast and brand, you should be working with the producers behind The Business Fix at Pedal Stomper Productions. Click the link to learn more about how you can get your podcast to the next level. https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com

🎙 Ready to Fix What’s Holding Your Business Back?
The Business Fix podcast delivers real-world strategies to grow your business, lead your team, and reclaim your time. New episodes drop weekly—packed with insights for business owners and managers who want to do better.

🔗 Connect with Chrissy and Josh at https://www.businessfixpodcast.com/ for more tools, support, and clarity.

Enjoy the episode? Leave us a review, share it with your leadership team, and let us know your biggest takeaway in the comments!

Transcript

0:30

We have talked before about bad corporate wallpaper, and because we're in the first 30s of the video, I can't swear yet. I will later. Yeah, sure you will. Why don't your employees buy into your mission statement, your core values? Why don't they buy into that? Because you do. Why why why don't you? I'm assuming you've seen this where people. Oh, absolutely. All day long. That is what we're going to talk about. Stay tuned. She's the CEO. He's the marketing and operations guy. If it's broken, you need the business fix. I don't think we're far enough in yet for me to swear yet. So we're going to wait another thirty to forty five seconds before I start the swearing. But most company, like companies, spend all money. Yes, all the money's all the money on. Let's get the creatives in and let's get them to write our help us write our mission statements and our core values. And You know what I find the most ironic about that? Yeah. They bring in someone from the outside to tell you about you. Correct. It never knows who you are. Correct. The best business consultant ever. The person read the website and is like, this is your mission statement and core values. Now write me a very large check. Yeah, here's who I think you are. Oh, I'm gonna give you four personality assessments to your leadership. I'm gonna ask six customers what they did. Yeah, that's, uh. Yeah. How's how's things been anyways? We're April fools. Happy April Fool's Day. If you're listening to the day this releases, we are. We are actually. There's no fooling. We're talking about this topic. Yes we are. Um. This this can't wait. This is a very serious topic. Uh, of course, coming out on April Fool's Day. Is there anything good or exciting going on in life in general, life in general. I mean, I've got a senior in high school, so she's getting ready to graduate. She picked a college. We're good. Where? Where she's going to the Ohio State. And everyone has to put the the. Well, she makes me put the. Now I'm going to say she's going to Ohio State, the Ohio State mom. So I'm like, you know, it's okay. After twenty two college applications, a whole bunch of visits, a refusal to absolutely apply to Ohio State, the force of us doing that. And then the magical decision, that's where she wants to go. I'm like, wow, aren't you glad Mom and Dad forced you to apply to one college? But it just made more sense for her. So, you know, I don't care. I don't have to be on a plane anymore. So yeah, no, you can try. And from where we're at, we're by Akron. I mean, it's roughly two hours. It is a little under. I mean, we won't talk about how I think it's the most painful drive in the state of Ohio. But, you know, Columbus to Cincinnati is much worse because a lot of. That's two lanes. Oh see, by then I'm just loopy, so I don't care. Right. No, that's the Columbus to Cincinnati is much worse because like I said, it's only two lanes. That's true. Um I remember coming home from Cincinnati one time in one of my old. I had an old like creeper van. It was great and I was doing like ninety miles an hour just with the flow of traffic. I mean, it sounded like the Millennium Falcon getting ready to come apart. And I'm like, this is sketchy. Um, so yeah, it's the racetrack. It is a ninety mile an hour, two lane racetrack. It's a good time. It is. I don't Columbus, I don't think is that bad. No, no. And it's it's a good excuse to go down for like a day and make a good chunk out of it. Exactly. So what about you? Anything good going on? Uh, whether the spotty Ohio weather, I like spring. Correct. And then second fall. Spring. Second fall. Spring. Right. Still, here's winter again. Um, there's been a couple of motorcycle rides, so that's. I'm calmer now. Okay. That's good. You weren't like my middle schooler who was like, I'm not wearing a coat at the very beginning of March. And we're like, bad, bad. No, don't put that away yet. Don't you remember? You you've lived here your entire life. This is not it's not spring, right? He's like, I'm no longer wearing pants. I'm only gonna wear shorts. And we're like, no, you're not right. No, you're you're. Don't burn the pants. Yeah. You're gonna want the pants. Yeah. Uh, that being said, when we go, like when I think about like the mission statement that we have as a company for me. Um, our mission is to build lasting authority and connection for businesses through high value podcast and media production. Yeah. Was that was that read with the gravitas? Very nice. And I mean, for us, our like, our core values, I mean, success is a shared thing. Yeah, these are super easy things to put into place. Yeah. For we're, I'm assuming we're going to talk about clarity. Yeah. What is yeah. For clarity. We solve insurance and HR headaches. That's it. Yeah. That's it. Our purpose statement. We provide peace of mind by simplifying the complicated and then our core values, you know, service excellence, community and teamwork. It's really simple. Do good. Be good is our motto. Yeah. I mean, these are all very simple things. They all I there are things that I know your employees can connect with. I know they can remember and say, correct. They're not hard. I mean, for us, I don't have our mission statement in my email signature. Yeah, I do have success as a shared thing in my email signature and everyone looks at it and they know it. They feel it. They, they, they go about it that way. Um, the ones that I love and I brought two problem ones here. Um, Facebook, their mission statement. Um, if you're driving, you may want to pull off to the side of the road and like buckle up, um, Facebook or meta now is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. How? Right, right. By polarizing everyone. Correct, correct. Um, let's spread as much misinformation as we can. That is how we're going to connect people. That is how like I, I mean, I never feel angry after getting on Facebook. No. Um, I mean, just what a load of horseshit. Yeah. Um, the other one that I truly love too is Walmart. Oh, yeah. They say it on their commercials, though. They say it on everything. I mean, they drill this into people's head. We help people save money so they can live better. Meanwhile, Walmart employees are, I believe now they're the second largest recipient of government benefits. Yeah. Because they don't make enough. So you want people to live better. Except for your employees. And then everyone wonders why. When I walk into a I won't walk into Walmart, but when I walk into a Walmart, I leave thinking, do I walk out in front of a bus? Yeah. Um, I you can't feel good about that. You just you just oh, it's just terrible. It's. And to me, that's that disconnect that I see in so many cases where it turns into corporate fluff or we're far enough in, I can say it now. Shitty wall art. Yes. Um, as you have said, the shitty wall art that so many people, they, they pay the consultants to come in and we're gonna, we're going to, we're going to go ahead and creative this out. We're going to. And that's when all the whiteboards go into the conference room and everyone gets excited, not the consultants get excited. Everybody gets a new t shirt. They get new bracelets that say the things on them. They get a hoodie. Oh yeah, new cup. Right, right, right. All these things. And of course, they usually do those in a shitty way too, because in like three weeks you can see that's been scratched off the coffee mug. Um, because someone's like, yeah, no, I don't want anything to do with this. Yeah. Then we've got like the flip side of this. Yeah. Where I know someone that has mission and mission statements for their family. Yeah, I do. We do. And it's so funny because any post that I see from you, it's in there. It is one hundred percent in there. I mean, it's not necessarily written out in there. Yes, but something of that is in there. Yes. Um, once again, we're going to the reason why I want to talk about that is obviously this is a subject that you're going to speak really well to. Yeah. As to how to do it the right way. Correct. The problem. And what I think is great is that you do have that you have that as a driver in your life. And that to me is why people need the mission and vision and core value statements. Where the hell are we going? What are we doing? Yeah. Now, getting people to buy in, like your twelve year old son. Yes. Who bought in when he was. I'm trying to think when we first did this, he was, I think, four when we started family purpose statement. Right? Yeah. So a little bit of size in at fourteen. It's great. It's about to say a little bit easier to buy in at four. Well, he was a hostage. Now he's not. He's still a hostage. But it's not as big. Less of a hostage. Eighteen year old, she's still she's still buys in. Right. So to me, the fact that you've gotten probably two of the toughest people on the planet, teenagers, to buy into this. They do that. That almost speaks more than getting your employees to buy into this. Yeah. So that being said, um, like I said, we've seen the shitty wall art. Yes. Um, why do most of these fail? And I mean, like, why, why do employees like do it when the boss is looking? Mhm. And then depending on which boss it is. And then when the boss turns around, goes away. Yeah. So a couple things I, I think it's really important that we call it crappy wall art. So because most mission statements are written up, right? They're written for the owner. They're written for the board. They're written for the website. They are not, especially the website, especially the website. They are not written down to the people actually doing the work. So if you wonder why no one buys in, it's because you wrote it up and you didn't talk to the people downstream to say, hey, do you know what we actually do? So tell me what it is you do here at Initech. I mean, yeah, if you want to, if you want to truly understand where your organization is and you already have a mission statement, a great test is to is to go to your team and say, hey, what do we do? What's our purpose statement or what's our mission statement? And if they've been with you for more than like three days and they look at you and go, ah, you have a problem? Yes. Yeah. And I think part of the reason we have that problem is because they fail that reality test around did they did they plan accordingly? And I would like to talk about, you know, the three A's of a dead mission statement. Did you bring the letter people today? I did not. I'm disappointed. I know they're on the. They're on my fridge. Are they on your fridge? I need photographic evidence on them. We need to. I'll send a photo. We need to put that to Instagram and we'll put it on Instagram. Yes, they are on the fridge. So the three A's of a dead mission statement are authenticity, alignment and application. Ooh, I like those. Yeah. So the first one, why did they die? Because it's not authentic. So the question is with authenticity is does leadership actually live it? Right. Because if your mission statement says integrity but leadership avoids hard conversations, the mission is dead DOA dead mission statement. So it goes right back to what we talked about in the nice leader trap. If you're nice instead of kind, you're avoiding accountability. Your mission statement becomes fiction. Do you really want fiction in your mission statement? No. Employees don't read that poster. They read your behavior. Yes. So if your actions don't match your adjectives, your mission is marketing, right? So let's just be safe. Let's just be honest about it. Most of the time. Your mission statement doesn't mean jack to the people in the organization. It's marketing for the people outside of your organization. Correct? If you want it to go far, it has to do both things. Yes. And it markets to the people in the organization first. All right. So the second one's alignment super easy question. Does it connect to the work. Most mission statements are too abstract. Changing the world driving innovation, empowering excellence. What the heck does that mean? Those are the ones that I love because those, as I like to say, try to blow sunshine where the sun normally does not shine. And that means jack squat to Carol, who's reconciling invoices at four forty five on a Tuesday. Okay, changing the world. I don't think Carol gives a crap about it. Carol. Carol. Carol does not care. So if your mission doesn't connect to daily decisions, it can't guide behavior. So I think mission should answer. What are we doing? Who are we helping and why does it matter today? Not someday. And sometimes, for the sake of simplicity, it can just be. What are we doing? I think that's perfectly fine. Because who you're helping is a given in your mind and a given in the mind of your team members. All right. We solve insurance and HR headaches. That is what we do. Headaches are painful. We take away pain. That's it. All right. Third is application. All right. And this is the one that I think sometimes gets hard for people. Does it show up in decisions? That's the question you're going to ask. And this is the one that the leaders often miss. So if your mission doesn't show up in how you hire, how you promote people, how you handle mistakes and what you reward, then it's not operational. It's ornamental. It's just a stupid decoration that nobody likes. Ornamental. Ornamental. And if nothing changes when you take the poster down. It was a decoration. It wasn't anything of consequence. So that's my thought alignment Application authenticity. It's interesting because the, the thing that I like about the, the triple A. Yeah. Um, besides the towing is, uh, which my vehicle's occasionally need is, uh, it is like you have to have all three of those pieces. Yeah. Or else it, it matters zero. If one of those is missing, don't worry about the other two. Exactly. Because they don't matter. No, I mean, come for me, business consultants. I do not care. As a business owner, you can easily answer these three questions. Yes. Does leadership actually live it? Does it connect to the work and does it show up in decisions? You do not need a consultant to help you figure that out. No. You know who would be the best to help you figure that out? Oh, who was the woman in accounting? You just. Betty. Carroll. Carroll. Ask Carroll. Ask Carroll in accounting. Yeah. If you ask Carroll, she will tell you. Yeah. Your people that have been there, your people that are in the trenches with you, they will tell you if it if it matches. Yep. Is this in alignment with what we do. And they're like, mm, no. If we were like that. Would you like being here more? Yes. Okay. Now we have a target. Yep. So how do you bridge that gap? How do you get from what? How do you get from. We're going to change the world to put in the damn numbers. Carol. Yeah. You translate it, okay. Translate Thai and teach. Okay. So leaders think their job is to state the mission. The real job is to translate the mission into decisions and repeat it daily. You make it livable. So you translate you Thai and you teach. So translate. You take the big vision and you break it into everyday language. Instead of we drive innovation, you're going to say we solve problems faster for our clients so they can grow their business. That's it. That makes sense, doesn't it? It can be simple. We provide peace of mind by simplifying the complicated. We take hard things that business owners are afraid of. HR and insurance and we make it easy for them to do. That's it. That's simple. It is. There's no buzzwords. No, there don't need to be. The. And you have to think about it, too. When we talk about like jury trials and like, I'm not a lawyer, but like, they talk about how you have to be able to explain it to a fourth grader. Yes. You have to be able to explain it to a fourth grader. Correct. In your business. Correct. I understand that your people are smarter than that, but you have to make it easy for them to understand when they are emotional, when they are charged, when when they're tired. Make it easy. Not only that, but sometimes we don't speak the same language. So if you bring it down to fourth grade level, there's a pretty good chance they're going to get it. Exactly. So the next thing we do is tie we connect the mission to the person's roles. So accounting Carol, it's not just about processing numbers. She's protecting cashflow, right? Customer service isn't just answering calls. They're protecting relationships. So the people care more when they see where they fit. When you see your part, you're able to adopt the mission more easily, more willingly. It's not just make me richer. No, it's. It's I need you. Do these things and we all help each other. We all rise together. And then the third is to teach. So you repeat it constantly at five employees. We've talked about this before. At five. Culture is proximity. At twenty five, culture is repetition. You have to keep saying it. And if you're not saying it weekly, it's not sticking because a mission statement isn't declared once just by decree. Everybody knows what it is. It is constantly repeated. It is taught daily. I just like it. Here's our mission statement. Memorize it. Memorize it. No, no, that shouldn't be homework. No, they should hear it enough that they should just know. And they should. They should hear it and feel it enough. Yes, that it just happens. Well, and having it visible within your. I do not have a problem with you putting it on your wall. I do not have a problem with you posting it in places where people can see. I have a problem. If you do that and you don't do anything with it, correct. That's it. You just have to do something with it. Correct. It's it should be visible on the wall. And on the faces. Yes. In the hearts and minds of your people. It's nice. We're doing a lot of sunshiney stuff today, but it's important. You have to make it mutual. Yes. Oh, one hundred percent. Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah. So when it's when it's one sided, you say it's got to be mutual. Yeah. And I see so many that are this big, fluffy, like we're going to change the world because the CEO is the one that's going to take the credit for all that. All the other people are going to be like, what the hell? Like I was, I was part of this. Why don't I get credit? Like, or the business owner did it once ten years ago and it's still the mission. You may not even do the same things, but it's still your mission. When they when the employee says like, why the hell am I going to buy into this changing the world? Because I know you're going to take the credit for it. Yeah. What? Why am I buying into this? What's what's in it for me? Yeah. How do you connect that for them? So I think you have to make it mutual. I mean, you know, most mission statements can be one sided. So it's really about asking the employees and like, what do you need? What do you want? So you've got to be collaborative with it. And I know for us as an organization, we go through, we look at our mission and purpose quarterly and say, is it still in line? And we go, yep, still aligns. Do our core values still align? I mean, not everybody does things the same way that we do, but we run on a cadence where we're just looking at it. And every year when we do our we do a two day retreat with our leadership team. We're really taking that point to home. But I would say when you're translating it to your team, you want to be simple, specific, and shared. Oh yeah, super easy. So if people can't remember it, they can't repeat it. Correct. Short beats clever every time. I know as an insurance brokerage, there are other brokerages that are like transforming the world, one digital footprint at a time, one blah blah blah blah blah. I'm like, come on, we all have insurance in HR headaches like we do not have to make. Stop making it sound so fancy and hard. This this is not a glamorous thing. No. We provide peace of mind by simplifying the complicated. We take things that people go. Oh, and we make them nice. So simple. Make it repeatable. Make it clear what success actually looks like. Solving a headache shared. I think this is where, you know, clarity kind of leans in sometimes too. This is where you do things with. Success is a shared thing. So if the mission only benefits revenue ownership and growth metrics, employees are going to disengage. If the mission improves their work, their stress, their development solves a problem. So they are truly helping a customer. They buy in one hundred percent. If your mission doesn't make employees lives better, it's not going to make your business better. And then specific, vague missions don't guide behavior, right? No, because like, how am I supposed to change the world? Make it clear exactly what success looks like. The world's changed. The world has changed. World has changed. That's. That's how I. That's how I'm successful. The world. The world has now changed and I'm done. I'm going to punch out and go home. Thanks. No, it's not how it works. So I talked a little about the visioning piece of how you put it together. Let's talk about operations. So, Josh, that's me. Yeah, it is you and I know because both of us have been in meetings with people who have terrible mission, vision and values. I think that's it. Yes. So whether it has been organizations that we volunteered in, organizations that we have worked for, organizations that we've consulted for, they are just I think we just have a lot of trauma around it. But. I put well put. How do you take a mission statement and actually operationalize it? So like making sure that marketing promise isn't just creating more cognitive dissonance for the team and they're not banging their head against the wall. Yeah, because I have, I have a wonderful example of this. I'm sure you do. There's times where we are in like where someone says, like, I've been in company meetings and they've said their mission and vision statements, and I start looking around the room like, am I, am I in the right place? Right? AM I somehow in the wrong place? Disney World, right? Oh my gosh. To me, it's the biggest thing is like the, you have to look at your operating procedures and make sure that they are aligned with the mission. Too many people are like, okay, for our operating procedures, we are going from point A to point B, yeah, as quick as we can. And that may completely bypass your actual mission. Like if your mission is quality first, but your operational stuff is geared towards get, get it done, get it done, get it done, get it done, get it done. And I see it so many times where people talk about like, hey, quality is job number one and we're stamping out fifteen thousand of these an hour do more. Right? Um, that's not alignment. Right. So it's making sure that your operations align with what you're trying to say. Because the problem is, is everyone says we want to be customer service number one, right? But do you do things to make customer service number one? Or do you just say once again, speed, speed, speed? The same thing is realize that you don't need to be the Rolex. You don't need to be the Rolls-Royce. You don't need to be this top end quality. There's room for all sorts of different levels of quality. Yeah. Not. There's a reason why I probably besides the the numbers involved with it, why don't drive a Rolls Royce. There is a reason why I don't have a Rolex and probably why I wouldn't ever have a Rolex. It's just not what matters to me. It's not what's important to me. It's about delivering the right value for the right customers. Yes. So make sure that your SOPs align with that. Um, every SOP should have a Y attached to it. Like, like every piece of that SOP, you should be able to tie back to the mission and say, how does how does this affect this? How does this play in with our mission statement? Does it fix it? Does it do the things? Yeah. So many times it does not go ahead. Well, and I was going to say I had an example. I was on the way here. I was hearing. So Klarna, the online company last year, they decided they were going to be operationally efficient, got rid of all their customer service people and automated it. Now they are slowly bringing customer service people back. Service was one of the things that's in their like core values. So it's like when you're going to make an operational decision, can you also make sure that you're aligned with your values as you're doing it? Because we care about the customer and we got rid of all of the customer service people that could help answer the customer questions like, oh, this is a problem. The fact that it took them a year to figure out that it was a bad idea. I got questions, but like, I think it goes to your point about you've got to be aligned. Yeah, you have like every decision you need to look at how does this fit with this? Otherwise you're you're making knee jerk random decisions. To me, it's the the other piece to that that so many people miss is if you don't have the operating procedures in place. Yes. You're not repeatable. Therefore, like if you I give McDonald's as an example because especially if you've watched the the movie about Ray Kroc, you realize how ridiculous he was about this. But that's what it took to build that empire. That is. Yes. That is the reason why he totally changed fast food. McDonald's does not have the best burger. No, but it's consistent. You know exactly what you're going to get. And it doesn't matter if you get it here or on the other side of the country, you are going to get the exact same thing. Yes. Your, your SOPs need to set that up within your mission. Now, the other thing that I like about this too, and you made a great point to it, is most companies, they market their sparkly new mission to the world before they sell it to their team. And even they, they give their team the sweatshirt and they think that's how you market it to them. Yeah, they'll get it by osmosis. If everyone's wearing the same shirt, they'll read it enough and then they'll like it. That's not true. If it doesn't work that way. If it's on every coffee mug in this facility where everybody else also wears the same thing. Prison. Don't do that. Just saying. Yeah. Don't put numbers on on your. So yeah, I mean, to me the problem is, is so many people, they market stuff at the last minute. And this is marketing across the board. I see it all the time. There's an event coming up. Oh, we should market this. You're a week out from your event. Like you needed to start marketing this a year ago. Yeah. The way that you are going to market this is by scaling the truth within your company. It starts with the message internally and once again has to go down by osmosis. And then you can give him the mug. Yes. Don't give him the mug first. Make them feel it and then give them the mug where they're going to be like, oh, hey, the saying on this seems to be it seems to describe this place, not they get the mug and go, who the hell is this about? Oh, us. I don't believe that. It's the. And the test that I always like to do is like the eyes test. The spark test is like if you walk into a customer service, a customer first place. Yeah. And everyone looks, looks like they're five minutes away from putting a hole in the wall that's shaped a lot like them. Yeah. And I mean, I see it, I'm going to use some of the, some once again bank examples. Um, you see some tellers like, oh, I'm going to try and look busy so I don't have to take care of this guy. Now, granted, it could just be because I'm walking in the bank and they don't want to scare me. But you always has questions, Right. Right. Why? Why? How did the decimal point get this far to the right? But really, you see it all the time in the way that people approach things. Um, recently, I mean, it was at a restaurant. No one was at the front. They talked about how it's supposed to be a great time there. There was no host or host or hostess at the front. Yes. And I'm like, wow. I mean, to to not be greeted when I walked in the door, but like, hi, thanks for coming on in. Yes. Um, once again, I'm instantly like, okay, this their mission about this doesn't work. Um, once again, if the marketing says we care, your Klarna example's perfect for this. If their marketing is like we care about you can please continue to hold. I, I it drives me nuts when I call some place and they're like, we care about your business. Please continue to hold. And I'm like, you've said that every fifteen seconds for the last Eight minutes. I don't care how nice the person is on the other end of the line, they are getting an earful. Yes. Um, so yeah, it's one of those things where if your marketing says we care and the operation is thirty minutes on hold, you're not only telling your customers that your mission doesn't matter. Your internal people are the same thing. One hundred percent the same thing. Because if you're willing to tell your customers the most, like the probably the second most important people, this. Yes. What? It drives me absolutely nuts. Now, on the flip side of this, I'm going to talk about a local grocer, Leach's meats and sweets. Okay. I walk in the people there. Hey, how's it going? Yeah, they all jokingly kind of complained. It's another day at work. Yeah, they're happy to see they like being there, right? Yes. Right. They would. Would they rather be at home on the couch watching Netflix, maybe. Yes. In the same sense. You go walking in there and they're like, hey, good to see you. Totally, totally different mindset. Yeah. I mean, it's once again and you walk in, it's palpable. Yeah. Um, they're yelling from across the room. Hey, how's it going? And I mean, yes, there's this palpable feeling of like, oh, they genuinely care about the service they offer. We don't see that in so many places that say they actually care. Mhm. Um, the other thing is you have to be like, you have to put the return on investment in the mission. Yes. How does it like the mission has to remove what I like to call the operational debt or fires from the employees. Okay. Um, same thing you alluded to with this. Just from an operational standpoint, it is the if we do this, this is going to make your job easier or this is going to make your job more fulfilling. If we keep this in mind, we are constantly looking at moving things around, moving tasks around in our organization. We. I mean, there are certain. There are certain ones that like editing more. There are certain ones that. Right. Like writing more. There are certain ones that like the social media side more. Do they all still have to do some of the same stuff? Yes. There's, there's, they're all doing the three main things, but we're trying to weight them accordingly to make sure that, oh, hey, you really enjoy this. Well, I want to make sure that you do this. Um, that is making sure that they're successful in this. And it's that once again, we're still accomplishing that mission. We're taking the roadblocks out. We're doing those other things. I'm excited to talk about our little collaborative pieces here because I think these are going to end up being hilarious. Yeah. Um, the, the poster on the wall audit. Yeah. And now I occasionally send to you some of those demotivational things. I love those, um, those are some of those demotivational posters are my favorite. I still remember I was like ten years old and someone at my dad's office had one that said it had all the hands in the center. It said teamwork because none of us is as dumb as all of us. As soon as I saw that, I thought yes. So hopefully if you have those posters up in your office as satire, great. Don't look at those. But my question is, is like, if you took down if you took the mission statement down today. Yeah. Would anything change? Like if you took that poster off the wall, would anything change? Um, or if like you, could you easily change your mission statement one hundred and eighty degrees? Because if you can change it one hundred and eighty degrees, then it wasn't a mission statement the first place. It was never there. That's my thought. Yeah, I'm the same way. It's not like, is it? Is it operational or is it optional? I think is the discussion thought. And my piece is if we take it off the wall And I'm like, hey, what's our, what's our purpose statement? And they can't say it. And that tells me that I haven't done a good job because we talk, we talk about it all the time as an organization. So I think that it's really about if you're not modeling what you mandate, if you're not continuing to, to repeat it and scale it, that's where the issue is. Like it's just wall art if you don't do the things around it. So one other. No, I, I wholeheartedly agree. And I see where people are like, okay, we're changing our mission statement. And I'm like, okay, you can, you can do that. Yeah. Mission statement should never change in my book, though. They should evolve. I agree. You you can, I agree. Ten degrees. Sure. More than ten degrees. You should be making two millimeter shifts at the most. And if you're like, I would think if I went in and I said, I'm going to blow up our mission statement or purpose statement, they'd be like, why? Like, we know, we, we like it. We don't know why we do. What are you going to do? And I'm like, no, no, no, no. Like there would be I think there'd be some confusion in questions. They might do it because we've got a lot of trust, but like there's no reason to. I want friction around like we need to be something different. If you go, we're changing the statement and they're like, well, we didn't even know it was in the first place. Like you have congratulations, you're a failure. You have shitty wall art. Nobody like that's the that's the issue is like, ask yourself, do people even care? Yeah. And if people if you're like, I don't think anybody would care, that's a problem. Yeah. Throw out the coffee mugs. Yeah. And the hoodies have a big hoodie burning party out in the parking lot. Yeah. I mean, I think a great again, I said it earlier, a great gauge of where your employee engagement is is do you know our purpose statement? Do you know our mission statement? Whichever one you use, we use them. We use both. Um, if you can quiz people and they can tell you or they can give you a good summary of what you do, you're winning. If they're like, if they look at you and then go back to their work. Or they, like you can tell they're like deer in the headlights. You have a problem. Yeah. And don't hire a consultant to fix that problem. It's your problem. Yours. If you need guidance on it, fine. But somebody else cannot tell you what you do know. No, it's got to be. You know, you get so frustrated. Let me just as someone who has paid a lot of consultants and I get frustrated at some point in time because I look at them and I go, you don't know my business the way I do. I'm like, oh crap, yeah, I've done that several times. The other thing is too, is like, you ask the people that do the things, like the consultants that you need are the ones that you're already paying on a weekly basis. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And the ones that help you shape the path, but they're not like, this is not, they're not going to come down from a mountain with stone tablets and give you something new and it's not going to happen. All I could think of was Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. At that point, I declare bankrupt. Yeah. Um, speaking of which, hopefully that's not the case, because what I want to ask about like mission statement, vision statements, million dollars, ten million dollars, they the same core doesn't change, but you have to deepen your clarity. All right. So at a million, the mission is intuitive and at ten million it has to be intentional. I agree, so more people means more interpretation and more interpretation creates more inconsistency. So you have to be really consistent. We used to have a longer mission statement. We don't anymore. There is a reason why I talk about operations and building the operations no matter where you're at, because once again, if you are open to interpretation, that's where you run into issues. When you are scaling from one to ten to twenty million, is that's where you're going to get those issues. Yes. Um, the other one that I like to is, and this is why we once again, I always joke that you have this clear and kind way of saying things and I am direct. Yeah. There. I don't want to say synonyms. Um, people like most people would probably rather have the here you go from you rather than the slap in the face from me. You hand it to them. Yeah. I slap them around with it like it's a dead fish. Yeah. Um, yeah you do. That being said, I know my answer. Why do you feel a short, maybe a little bit ugly and honest? Mission statement is better than the long beautiful. Like the woo woo statement. Yeah. Fluff feels good in a room. Does not it does. It feels good in the room. When you're dealing with a board or you're dealing with people that like, just want you to feel smart. It's fine. It feels good for a second. Directness really works in the real world and it works with your people. So I mean, yeah, the prettier the mission statement, probably the more impressed your board is going to be. Honest ones really guide behavior. Yeah, I see it less snark and sarcasm like I. Yes, I have an airline one. You can guess who it is, I don't know. I do know who it is, but I'm not going to say because I don't need them to yell at me. Um, to connect the world. Creating opportunities, fostering understanding, expanding horizons by connecting people and communities to each other in their own potential. How about you just say we help people get where they need to go? Like, what is that for? Fly the airplane. Fly the airplane. Yeah. No. To me, like when I see stuff like that, I instantly. And I'm just going to say this flatly, my bullshit meter just gets pegged. It's fluff. It is fluff. Connecting the world. Really? Because I waited on hold for forty five minutes on Sunday. Because you couldn't connect to an operator. I'm not not feeling real connected here. Not feeling real connected here. No, I totally and I mean, obviously, like I'm not going to have a fluffy statement about anything. No, no. If someone. I guarantee if I made a fluffy statement about something, people would be like, are you feeling okay? Are you having a stroke? Um, so yeah, that to me, and it's one of those things where if it's fluffy, you can't execute on it. No, if it's direct, I can execute on direct things. I cannot execute on fluff. No. Unicorns are not executed. I mean, be direct. Yeah. Like we develop technology that keeps people moving. That makes sense. Sure. That's not fluffy. No. It's Goodyear. Yeah. That's it. Yep. Simple. Uh, couple of key takeaways. Um, I love the coffee shop test. Ask them what the company's goal is in their own words. Yeah, I'm okay if they mangle the statement, as long as they have the idea. As long as I can draw a line from point A to point B without too many curves. Yeah, I'm good with it. Yeah. We take care of people's HR and insurance issues. That's fine, I like that. Yep. We I mean, we help them create quality podcast to get the content out. That's it. Great. Love it. I'd say combat the three A's of a dead mission statement. Make sure you have authenticity, alignment and application. Yes. Yes. Now from that, in those audits, what you're doing, make sure that you are incentivizing the behaviors that fit with your mission statement and not being like, hey, um, do like be really, really good to people as quickly as you can. Yeah, duh. Translate Thai and teach your mission statement for it to stick. Yep. Super simple. Oh, that is, it is, um, to me. Make sure like success is a shared thing is our core value. And once again, make sure that the mission includes the team, not just you. Yeah. Great mission statements are simple, specific, and shared. Love it. Uh, core values versus mission statement, which is more important for a ten person team core values because they drive behavior? Yeah. No, I mission sets direction. Yeah. Value set decision. Brilliant jerk. Can they ever can they ever, like, be aligned with your mission temporarily? I agree behavior always exposes alignment eventually. Yeah, because they'll come in and for like the first six months, you're like, wow, this person's great. And then six months later, you're like, I hate them. Yeah. Josh, what's the Cringiest mission statement you've ever heard? Uh, Hershey's undisputed marketplace leadership. What the hell does that mean? How does that tie to chocolate? I don't know. Undisputed marketplace leadership. How long have they had that? I don't know. I Google how long they've had that. Maybe they've had it forever. When I saw that, I was like, seriously? At that point, I'm like, because that to me, I go back to pinky and the brain. Yeah. Come, brain, we have a mission. Take over the world. Yeah. Narf. I just I'm like, yeah. Uh, that being said, make sure your mission statement actually is your mission and make sure it's also your employees mission. If you want them to buy in, they need to be a part of it. Thank you to everyone that has come along for this ride. Next week is episode fifty, which we're both really excited about. We're going to bring you. It's going to be a celebration. We are bringing you in on that. So make sure you show up for that. Um, business Podcast.com. Um, and then as always, go to the website, share this with a friend or just maybe share it with your boss. Yeah. Or the marketing consultant you hired to do your mission statement, right? Any one of those people, do us a favor. Take care of yourself. If you can take care of someone else, we will see you very, very soon.