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Why are you in business? It’s such a simple question that to ask it seems almost absurd. Yet, the answer can hold the key to your success or failure.
If your answer involves “making a profit,” you may have missed the mark. However, if you say, “to deliver value to customers,” you’re in tune with the way building service contractors need to think and operate today. You have the foundation of a true mission.
Profit is just basic survival. A mission, on the other hand, drives the work you do and inspires the organization you lead.
Putting that mission onto paper, and creating a follow-up program to help institute it into your organization, can help keep your company on track. A written mission statement describes what an organization is trying to accomplish and why it is trying to accomplish it. Companies may even take this a step further by creating mission statements for each department, or even encourage each worker to develop personal mission statements to discuss during performance reviews.
Whatever the depth, a mission statement is important because it gives employees a frame of reference to help them understand what the company is all about. It also serves as a yardstick to measure actual performance.
A mission statement also can enhance customer communications. Many building service contractors include their statements in proposals and on business cards. The message gives the customer an instant idea of what your goals are and how you hope to help clients meet their own needs.
Yet, an even greater impression is made when customers see your employees carrying out the company mission in their everyday actions.
“A mission statement should provide enough flexibility so that employees can be creative,” she says, “and not be put ‘in a box.’” A good mission statement also should be:
If you want a mission statement to truly reflect the company’s values and preferred method of operation, it is important to involve a variety of individuals in the development process. This inclusion not only helps create a valid statement, but also provides an incentive for people to buy into the mission and help successfully carry it out.
Recurring themes of successful statements center around the customer, quality, teaming, integrity, and employee growth. Mission statements rich in these foundational business concepts tend to stand up better to the test of time.
Many BSCs accompany their mission statements with vision statements and other assorted company philosophies.
Whereas mission statements portray what a company does in the real world, vision statements tend to be lofty, high-level, often unattainable descriptors of the ideal state of the company. In the other direction are statements relating to goals, objectives, purposes, etc. These tend to be more policy-related, task-oriented, and shorter-term than mission statements.
Doyle Building Services, Inc., Rochester, New York, evaluates its mission statement during an annual strategic-planning process, says executive vice president Jerry Thorpe. The process begins with managers at all levels completing a company survey that addresses each of Doyle Building Services’ goals. Then the top management examines the results.
“It’s a very involved process,” says Thorpe, “We [utilize] a third-party consultant and it takes about three months to complete.”
Each of the items in the resulting action plan must align with the Doyle Building Services mission. And because of the high level of employee involvement during the entire process, most people find it easy to take on each year’s goals and implement them. In fact, Doyle attributes this full participation for helping the company grow from about $330,000 in sales, just 11 years ago, to nearly $17 million today.
While Doyle Building Services weaves its mission into its strategic planning process, Cavalier Maintenance Services, Inc., headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, links its mission to a quality control process. The company has a dedicated quality process manager, who meets on a monthly basis with a cross-functional team of 12 staff members.
Every Cavalier employee is part of a team, and each team earns points on a wide variety of mission-related factors. One is being able to correctly cite the company mission statement, which is short and to the point: “The Cavalier Mission is to consistently deliver uncompromising Quality Service to all of our Customers and Teammates every day.”
Such rote is secondary, of course, to employees’ success in actually delivering on that mission, measured by the company’s quality-control process.
“We have what we call our ‘biz plan’ meeting every quarter, where all of our management personnel come together,” says Kevin Rohan, Cavalier’s president. “We measure a variety of things like profitability, productivity, market share, number of new customers, account retention ... about 15 key result areas in all.”
Cavalier’s team-centered quality process, which strives to achieve the company mission, has helped fuel consistent 20 percent annual growth, and driven expansion into four additional markets over the last few years, according to Rohan.
Doyle simultaneously shifted its strategy and mission to redefine “excellent quality” in terms of value to the customer. Now the statement reflects that shift: “We satisfy customer and employee needs through high-quality, high-value contract facility and related support services.”
When it comes to customer satisfaction, Tom Chase, president of Maintenance Experts Inc., St. Paul, Minnesota., warns contractors not to fall into the common trap of letting the words do all the work. Reviewing a mission statement may require contractors to look at how well they enact it, rather than changing the actual words.
“You shouldn’t have to tell the customer that customer service is your number one priority,” he says. “They should be able to see it like an attitude.”
Customer needs aren’t the only reasons to reevaluate a mission statement. Cavalier Maintenance Services has a significant number of Hispanic employees, and is considering changing its mission statement, addressing such hard-to-understand words as “consistently” and “uncompromising” to make it more understandable.
“Those words might not necessarily translate well, nor have a meaning to some folks,” says Rohan. “So what we’re looking at is taking the same meaning, just shortening it.”
Sometimes basic growth can warrant a mission change, says John Boyce, a principal at Janitron Maintenance Management Services, St. Louis, Missouri. The company began seven years ago as a two-person operation with a mission that was more like a slogan: “Cleaning that would make your mother proud.” Today, Janitron has more than 250 employees, covers three markets and recently made the St. Louis Business Journal’s list of fastest-growing privately held companies in the metro area.
The company has outgrown its simple slogan and is looking for a more sophisticated mission statement to reflect its current position.
“When you publish our old mission, it sounds a little corny,” says Boyce. “We tried to put it into more of a Year-2000 type of mentality and catch up with size and stature that the company is [developing]. It still, in my mind, has the same basic aim. It’s just that the verbiage fits more with a corporate entity as opposed to a mom-and-pop, two-guy shop.”
Although Janitron hasn’t evolved to the point where the company mission is strongly linked to any formal processes, Boyce has made sure his managers and employees are involved in the development process to help integrate it into every level of operations once it’s complete.
Whichever route you take, getting started is the hardest part. Once begun, your passion for your business — and delighting your customers and employees — will inspire you to a successful result.
