Your mission statement, should you choose to accept it

Mission statement

Mission statements – business mumbo jumbo or a useful tool? I think the latter. At the very least it sets out on paper and in your mind what your organisation’s purpose is in a sentence. And with a good tailwind this filters down to your team (from employees and customers to suppliers and other stakeholders).

Recently the Clear Books team enlisted the help of PR and marketing guru, Louise Doherty, to reflect on all aspects of our brand identity (incidentally these workshop sessions are a great team building exercise).

Last night I was toying with a new mission statement (subject to change) which better summarises the aspirations of our company. This is particularly the case as we launch new business software that complements our accounting software e.g. our online payroll software  (new website coming soon) is  now processing thousands of employees’ payslips every month!

Our current mission statement is “Online accounting to free your time” which also doubles up as our slogan.

I researched a couple of famous tech brands and here are their mission statements:

Google’s mission statement is “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Apple’s mission statement is “Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.”

I came up with the following for Clear Books.

Clear Books’ mission is to empower entrepreneurs worldwide with next generation business software for increased profitability, efficiency and success.

Is it a bit wishy washy? A bit corporate at the end? Is it missing anything? Do you love it or hate it? You are part of our team too… any alternative suggestions?

Brand identity

The team recently did an interesting workshop on what we think of ourselves i.e. what we think our brand identity is. Of course this is only half the story. The other half comes from you. We’re really keen to hear what you guys think our brand stands for. How would you describe Clear Books, the team, service, support, app and benefits down the pub in a few sentences?

All comments are welcome…