the times | Friday March 18 2022 39Business
Don’t laugh, think of a better one:
the greatest mission statement of all
mission statements and they have
been proved to work, up to a point. “A
statement can be helpful, but alone
it’s not enough,” says Professor Marya
Besharov, of the Saïd Business School,
Oxford. “It has to be translated into
action. If you don’t translate it into
action, or worse you are inconsistent,
then it can be worse than not having
a mission statement at all.”
She pointed out that some
statements invariably mean that you
attract more scrutiny than you would
otherwise. Google, famously, adopted
“Don’t be evil” as one of its mantras,
incorporating it into its employees’
code of conduct and using it as a wi-fi
password when you visited its offices.
It was quietly dropped in 2018 after
many, including the UK parliament,
complained about the company’s
unethical reluctance to pay tax.
Huel, a meal-replacement powder
used by bodybuilders, has “Don’t be a
dick” written in large letters on its
HQ wall. There will be plenty of
potential employees coming for a job
interview or investors thinking about
backing the company who might take
offence, but arguably that is a good
thing. Good mission statements,
Professor Besharov says, don’t just
motivate employees but help to
generate identity, something that
younger workers increasingly want
from their employers. We all go to
work to earn a salary, but there is a
cadre of workers who also want to
build a better tomorrow, be it by
selling protein shakes or “high-
standard cigarettes, marketed
responsibly”.
One of the best mission statements
out there is BP’s: “We want to help
the world reach net zero and improve
people’s lives.” It makes you go,
“Woah, there!” And then, “Really?”
And then, “But I just filled up my gas-
guzzling Volvo XC90 at one of your
petrol stations and you charged me
£100 for the privilege. You have not
improved my life.”
But it is distinctive, rather than
inane. And it is provocative. It will
annoy some people but encourage
an esprit de corps among those
workers who sign up
to this ambition,
which is what a
good mission
statement should do.’’
Harry Wallop is a consumer
journalist and broadcaster. Follow
him on Twitter @hwallopHarry Wallop
company that sells cigarettes. Even if
it does shift lots of its customers from
smoking to vaping, is that really
Building A Better Tomorrow™? Also,
I find it pretty insufferable that BAT
feels the need to trademark these four
words. Is it concerned that someone
else — maybe a payday loans
company, or armaments
manufacturer — might nick its
whizzy slogan?
Mission statements in themselves
are not the problem. Nor is slapping
them on office walls, if you think they
will foster a sense of shared purpose
among employees. People who work
at Disney’s London HQ in
Hammersmith are greeted with this:
“In every job that must be done there
is an element of fun – Mary Poppins.”
Cynics may roll their eyes, but
cynics are unlikely to end up working
for the Mickey Mouse corporation.
There has been serious academic
research into the effectiveness ofMy latest television
addiction is The
Dropout, a drama
based on the
Theranos scandal. If
you don’t remember the story, it
involved Elizabeth Holmes, a
Stanford University dropout, who
created a $9 billion medical testing
company, Theranos. She claimed that
her company had invented an
incredible machine: with just one
pinprick drop of blood it could test for
hundreds of different diseases and
ailments in a matter of minutes.
It was apparently set to
revolutionise the medical diagnostic
market. Only it didn’t work, nor was it
ever close to working. Holmes has
been found guilty of fraud and awaits
sentencing.
The drama on Disney+ is fantastic,
proving that this streaming service is
beating Netflix in terms of dramas (if
you haven’t watched Dopesick, you
must). Yes, I have already devoured
the Dropout podcast and the very
good documentary, The Inventor: Out
for Blood in Silicon Valley, but the
drama, starring Amanda Seyfried,
fleshes out all the characters. And it’s
huge fun. The only downside is that
Disney+ is releasing only one episode
a week. Old school.
One of my favourite moments is
when Theranos moves into a fancy
new HQ in Palo Alto, California (of
course) and Holmes installs an
enormous mural in the lobby with a
quote from Star Wars’ Yoda: “Do or
do not, there is no try.” This is not
invented by the scriptwriters. She
really did this.
How was it possible for so many
investors, customers and advisers to
walk through that lobby, see that
mission statement and not realise that
she was a complete fraud? Maybe it is
because large, childish and inane
mission statements in company
headquarters have become the
corporate norm.
Only last week I had to visit Bupa,
coincidentally to have a blood test. In
its clinics it plasters its mission
statement on the walls: “Passionate,
Caring, Open, Authentic,
Accountable, Courageous,
Extraordinary.” It is not objectionable,
but the collection of adjectives is so
vacuous as to have no meaning.
Would anyone claim that their
organisation was dispassionate, cruel,
closed, inauthentic, unaccountable,
cowardly and ordinary? Well, maybethe Home Office. But for a mission
statement to have weight it needs to
make some sort of stand, not just be a
collection of agreeable words.
Back in 2010 the trading company
CMC Markets unveiled a new mission
statement: Dream, Dare, Deliver. So
committed was it to this new slogan
that it renamed meeting rooms as:
Dream room, Dare room and Deliver
room. It is unclear how pregnant
employees felt having to sit through
meetings in the Deliver room without
an epidural.
One FTSE 100 company has
trademarked its mission statement:
Building A Better Tomorrow™. Can
you guess which leading company
this is? AstraZeneca, which has built a
better today thanks to its vaccines?
Barratt Developments, which builds
quite a few homes? Nope. It’s British
American Tobacco, or BAT as we
must now call it, because heaven
forfend that we think of it as a‘‘
Go-Ahead
fined £23m
for errors
on franchise
Robert MillerGo-Ahead Group has received a lower
than expected fine from the govern-
ment over the mishandling of its former
London and South Eastern Railway
franchise.
The Newcastle-based bus and train
operator was issued with a £23.5 million
penalty by the Department for Trans-
port, which was lower than the £30 mil-
lion provision made in Go-Ahead’s
accounts published last month for the
year ending July 3, 2021.
The amount will be settled from the
restricted cash balance of the former
franchise, Go-Ahead said yesterday.
The shares responded positively to the
resolution of the fine, closing up 101p, or
16.3 per cent, at 721p.
The department did not renew
Go-Ahead’s franchise last September,
with the government stepping in to run
operations as the “operator of last
resort”. This was the result of “serious
errors” in London and South Eastern’s
dealing with the department over
several years. The network stretches
across southeast England, including
London, Kent and East Sussex.
The department said yesterday that
the former franchise “had deliberately
concealed over £25 million of historic
taxpayer funding relating to HS1, which
should have been returned to the
taxpayer”. Grant Shapps, transport
secretary, said: “I took decisive action
and did not renew the contract with
South Eastern following this appalling
breach of trust.”
The department said it was recover-
ing £64 million from London and South
Eastern in relation to the breaches of
the franchise agreement, and the fine
was in addition to this amount.
Shapps said the former franchise’s
behaviour was “simply unacceptable
and this penalty sends a clear message
that the government, and taxpayers,
will not stand for it”.
A Go-Ahead spokesman said: “We
accept this penalty. Since these events
came to light, our corporate govern-
ance procedures have been enhanced
and the group is under new leadership.”
The company employs more than
27,000 people across its bus and rail
businesses in the UK, Singapore,
Ireland, Norway and Germany.
In Britain it runs the country’s largest
passenger franchise, GTR, which
covers Southern, Gatwick Express,
Great Northern and Thameslink. This
is managed through its 65 per cent
owned subsidiary Govia, which is
35 per cent owned by Keolis UK.