Mission Impossible

Everyone has to have a mission statement. At least that is the conventional wisdom that hospital have taken from the for-profit world. I've been looking at many mission statements from various types of institutions and find many of them lacking. In particular, I looked at mission statement for these institutions.

Johns Hopkins Hospital -
To be the world's preeminent health care institution
To provide the highest quality care and service for all people in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human illness
To operate cooperatively and interdependently with the faculty of The Johns Hopkins University to support education in the health professions and research and development into causes and treatment of human illness
To be the leading health care institution in the application of discovery
To attract and support physicians and other health care professionals of the highest character and greatest skill
To provide facilities and amenities which promote the highest quality care, afford solace and enhance the surrounding community.

Google - Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Aetna - Aetna is dedicated to helping people achieve health and financial security by providing easy access to safe, cost-effective, high quality health care and protecting their finances agaisnst health related risks.


When I look at these three statements, I think about how useful they are. If I had to rank them they would be Google as the best and Hopkins as the worst. The reason being is that I believe a good mission statement is short, concise, but not vague. As an employee at Google, I would know what to think about to bring value to the organization. At Hopkins, I'm not so sure.

Interestingly enough, I looked up the mission statement of a hospital in Maryland that I knew was having financial and operational difficulties. The mission was no where to be found. This teaches us that short is better than long, direct is better than vauge, but something is obviously better than nothing.