Diatribe against Logos, Missions and Visions by Odio Missione - discovered by Leon the Huguenot:

Have you ever considered how much energy is wasted in our society on logos, mission statements, and the other appurtenances of management practice as forced upon us by the dominant business culture?  Perhaps ‘forced’ is incorrect since we seem to lap these things up like the pathetic cultural colonists we are.

In the case of mission statements I know one organisation which spent three days using top executives to devise a mission statement.  The result, a product of the utmost dreariness, was widely trumpeted and stuck up all over the said organisation.  Did it have any positive effect on the productivity of the organisation?  Well, no.  In fact the effect was negative because of the thousands of dollars worth of salaries which had been wasted on this futile exercise.  The employees of the organisation thought the whole thing was a joke and, far from improving morale - considered by some benighted souls to be one of the products of mission statements - there was even less faith in management among the rank and file.

Of course we are told we have to have mission statements and this is hardly ever questioned.  In fact, if one does question their development and use, one is seen as out of step - not in touch with a business practice which is wholly imported and un-Australian.  Part of the reason for this is that there are many who make their living from the propagation of these second-hand ideas: the business consultants; the gurus on lecture tours preaching tripe to the colonials; the policy makers; the indiscriminate wordsmiths.

How did the presence of a mission statement help the State Bank of South Australia which, as many will know, lost $3.2 billion.  Unfortunately I have not retained a copy of their mission statement - it would be of considerable historical value.  Would it have included the intention to lose $3.2 billion of tax-payers’ money?  I think not.  How well modern management practice assisted in the flourishing of that organisation!

Then we have the logos.  Well, of course we have to have a logo.  Who will understand, for example, that a state railway is in the business of trains if you don’t have a stylised train at the top of all stationery?  Thousands will have been spent on a logo to go on everything from the most trivial CEO minute to a train ticket.  And sometimes one may not be able to tell what the logo means.  One occasionally sees explanations of logos.  “The vague blob in the top corner is an A53 class locomotive at speed; the series of curved lines radiating in all directions represents the large network of lines through the state.  The other blobs represent things carried on our trains such as, er, goods and people.”  If a logo requires explanation it surely does not deserve to exist.

I should add that I am not talking about N.S.W. State Railways.  I don’t even know if they have a logo.  But they would have had to exercise grim determination and real leadership to avoid having one because; again, we all have to have one since we are unthinking and uncreative business-cultural colonists.

The logo industry is an industry akin to the mission statement one but involves graphic artists, computer whiz-kids and stationery suppliers.  There is a lot of money in it.  When the need is detected for a change in the logo - perhaps when the CEO has gone on Viagra or something, or somebody just feels the need to spend more tax-payer or shareholder funds - thousands of dollars worth of stationery is trashed in the effort to get the new logo quickly into people’s brains.

Yet if you approached a random selection of the populace with a sample of widely-used logos you would find that perhaps 1% of the group would recognise less than 10% of the logos.  So much for their use in promoting companies and expressing succinctly what an organisation is concerned with.

Why can’t we have simple letterheads e.g. Lurk Railways in bold at the top?  Beneath that arresting heading one could have a brief statement saying “we run trains on rails” if the corporate executives were concerned that the general populace might not understand the purposes of a railway company.  “We run trains on rails” is a hell of a lot more meaningful than the usual gibberish one gets fed in the form of a mission statement e.g.

“We shall strive to run the most wonderful trains in the most marvellous way on our beautiful rails for the benefit not only of the people of Lurk, but for all citizens of the world and the local galactic neighbourhood.  We shall all feel absolutely superb about doing it and believe ourselves to be personally fulfilled in a most meaningful way.”

Brevity is an important thing.  Churchill knew about it.  Some of the Victorians (not the state - the era) knew about it.  For example, a recent walk in the Scottish Highlands by a Spectator contributor came up with this gem:

“An 1894 sign saying ‘Beware of Trains’ (three words) has been replaced by a 107-word Health and Safety diktat.” (The Spectator 11 July, 1998 - page 9  - Anthony O’Hear)

By being over-inclusive - trying to provide for all eventualities - we wind up with statements that people will not understand and which may be positively dangerous.

And now finally visions.  A few hundred years ago people would either be lionised or, more likely, burned at the stake if they professed to have visions.  Joan of Arc, of course had visions and, for all I know, she might have had a mission statement; at least she did have a genuine mission unlike the many charlatans who profess to have one today.  But she undeservedly was burned at the stake - not that I am saying that execution is necessarily unsuitable for some who have visions.

Nowadays everyone has to have a vision.  And the vision is usually of the most banal possible nature.  No angels ascending golden staircases; no overwhelming,  eschatological experiences - just trivialities.  “We will lead the country in making the best phligetts.”: “We shall impress every being on the planet - living and non-living - with the transcendence of our phligetts.”

The vision has to be ‘innovative’ - that goes without saying.  Never has a word been used so often by people who do not understand it.  The assumption seems to be that all innovations are good; that innovation is inevitably beneficial.  The word ‘innovative’ contains no information about quality - good or bad.  An innovation may be simply appalling.  Thalidomide was an innovation; few other than sufferers from leprosy would consider it to be beneficial (although it is being used experimentally in the treatment of some cancers).

But what most people who use the word ‘innovative’ mean is something good and useful which they have discovered on their last overseas trip.  No creativity there; just mimicry.  Others will admire them for their second hand, even stolen, ideas and commend them on their innovative nature.  Perhaps even the people who introduced logos, mission statements and visions to Australia - for which a particularly uncomfortable corner of hell is already reserved - were considered innovative at the time.  In fact one can be sure they were since the introductions satisfied the Australian criteria for innovation: something good, from somewhere else, which we didn’t have to strain our brains producing.

And you know and I know that a company with a carefully developed vision, mission statement, and an expensively wrought logo, can still be the most god-awful organisation to work in or to deal with and have absolutely no idea of what it is on about.

What truly creative thing can we do about all this?  Well, we can establish a business culture that is really Australian and carefully examines any international business trends before slavishly adopting them.  At present we have a culture such that, were a set of overseas business gurus to suggest executives should all wear tutus as a mark of authority, our locals would very quickly hop on the bandwagon.  The sale of tutus would skyrocket and people would congratulate each other on their innovativeness - perhaps even their vision.

We can become truly innovative - with a bias towards beneficial innovations rather than disastrous ones - by using our own God-given noggins.  We can avoid imported jargon unless it really does serve a purpose that no other word can.  People say that English is not static - it is continually developing; but should not we be the ones developing of our own language?   Again we seem to be content that our language development is being done elsewhere.  So much for the Clever Country!

And we can consign all mission statements, logos and visions to the rubbish bin of history.  Maybe visions do require special treatment.  The revival of public burnings of CEOs and others professing visions might be seen as a little extreme.  Could the rack or stocksbe brought back for this purpose?

Odio Missione