If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
~ Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra always hit it right on the head; even if you didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Think about it, which one of us would start on a journey, a project, or any enterprise – large or small – without having an end in mind. Jesus said, “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build, and was not able to finish.’”Kenichi Ohmae said, “Rowing harder does not help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction”. Do you know where you’re headed in your practice? Do you know why you’re headed there?”

Seems like common sense, but I’d wager that the vast majority of dental practices don’t have a mission statement, unless, of course, the statement is something like, “I’ll go to work every day and try and make enough money to live and retire the way I want”.

A mission statement defines the reason an organization exists (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2008). Organizations develop them to share with their employees and, in many cases, their customers. A good, clear, thoughtful mission statement will include:

  1. Focus on a limited number of goals.
  2. Stress your practice’s major policies and values.
  3. Define the major competitive sphere in which your practice will operate. For example, cosmetic dentistry (See below “market vs. product”. The example here could be better stated, right?)
  4. Takes a long-term view.
  5. Short, memorable, and meaningful as possible. (Kotler & Keller, 2009)

Peter Drucker posed the questions that all mission statements should address:

  • Who is the customer?
  • What is of value to the customer?
  • What will our business be?
  • What should our business be?

The mission statement should:

  • Be concrete.
  • Establish your practice’s individuality.
  • Be inspiring and relevant to everyone in your practice.

I’d also add to all these that a mission statement should be easy to remember!

Now, take all that information and shove it into a short paragraph or a long sentence!

Before you have a mission statement, you must have a vision. A vision is a picture of what you want your practice to be, and broadly, what your practice wants to achieve (Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2007).

Here are a couple of vision statements that you may recognize:

  • “Our vision is to be the world’s best quick service restaurant” (McDonalds)
  • “Make the automobile accessible to every American” (Henry Ford, when establishing Ford Motor Company)

You can see that the vision is a very short statement or snapshot of what you want to be and, broadly, ultimately achieve.

For a mission statement to be effective, the employees must have a strong sense of your practice’s ethical standards. This will guide their behavior as the work to help the practice reach its vision. So, business ethics are vital to arriving at a vision (what you want your practice to become) and your mission (who your practice will serve and how you desire to serve them) (Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2007).

Here are a few examples of mission statements:

  • “Be the best employer for our people in each community around the world and deliver operational excellence to our customers in each of our restaurants.” (McDonalds)
  • “Our mission is to be recognized by our customers as the leader in applications engineering. We always focus on the activities customers’ desire; we are highly motivated and strive to advance our technical knowledge in areas of material, part design and fabrication technology.” (LPN, a GE Plastics Company)
  • “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” (Google)
  • “We help people trade practically everything on earth. We will continue to enhance the online trading experiences of all – collectors, dealers, small businesses, unique item seekers, bargain hunters, opportunity sellers, and browsers.” (eBay)

I think that you can see that McDonalds and Google have the better mission statements.

The best way to define your business is using a market definition vs. using a product definition (Kotler & Keller, 2009).

Here are some examples:

  • Product: Endodontics
  • Market: Pain Management
  • Product: Cosmetic Dentistry
  • Market: Self-esteem
  • Product: General Practice
  • Market: Families.

In other words, defining yourself by market, rather than product is to focus on patient’s needs.

Well, that should be enough to digest for now.

In my next blog, I’ll leave the theory and get into the practical nuts and bolts of writing a missions statement for your practice.

Works Cited
Hitt, M. A., Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R. E. (2007). Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization. Mason, OH: Thomson Higher Education.
Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2009). Marketing Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (2008). Organizational Behavior. NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.