A mission statement is the concise articulation of why a company exists and what it aims to accomplish, used to align stakeholders around purpose. Most mission statements are generic enough to apply to dozens of companies ("delivering excellent products to customers") and therefore useless. The rare good mission statements are specific enough to differentiate the company and concrete enough to guide actual decisions. The mission sits alongside but distinct from the vision statement (which describes the future state) and core values (which describe how the company operates). It is one of the most-discussed and least-useful elements of company building when treated as a marketing exercise, and one of the more meaningful when...