I am struck by this whole mission statement thing. They must teach Building a Mission Statement in business school somewhere. You know the drill. Times get tough, you need to focus, change up some things, get creative, solve problems, re trench and re evaluate. Someone then says, “what is our mission around here, anyway? What are we trying to do?”

Then, the offsite happens. You go off site to a nice place, with free pencils, JUICE during breaks, and way-nice breakfast rolls. You hire a facilitator, generally some ex HR person, who is very smooth at this sort of thing. It all seems the right thing to do, you are talking about key issues, and your team is working well together. Side teams are formed, they report back to the main group with their suggestions, and two days later…these things take time…you have a new mission statement that adroitly communicates exactly what it is you do.

Then at home, Hilda (my catchall name for any spouse, be it M or F), asks you how the meeting went, and you try the MISSION STATEMENT out for the first time. If you glaze her eyes over, you have a bad one. If she nods, smiles even, and then later TELLS her friends about it, you have a good one.

My first startup was a company called Varitronics. Scott Drill and I started it because the entrenched monopolist in the adhesive backed tape market, Kroy, was creating an opportunity by the way they were mistreating their extensive dealer network. (Note: before the little Brother machines arrived, Kroy and Varitronics started this entire market. How we missed that market is not the point of this post.)

After figuring out how to make a machine that did the same thing, but better and faster and with better discounts for dealers, we launched the product and the company with an ad in the trade press that shouted, “We Beat the Helvetica Out of Kroy.”

As we were building our team, we decided to do an offsite to get our mission statement down on paper. I don’t think we could afford a facilitator but we had the whole deal, charts on the wall, lots of ideas and grand-sounding big company phrasing.  We were going to be the next GM of the Graphics World if memory serves, or some such nonsense.

We were well on our way to getting the right one when Scott interrupted the whole meeting and basically said, “Who are we kidding? We have one mission and we all know what it is. It’s Beat Kroy.”

So whenever I see someone struggling with their own mission statement, I want to tell this story again and again. For you literal types, you do not have to have a mission statement that beats anyone. The point is: tell it in five words or less so Hilda tells her friends.

How do you find these opportunities?

First, use your natural curiosity. Ask yourself why something is done that particular way. My first startup, Varitronic Systems, came about because Scott Drill and I asked why the only company (Kroy) in the lettering machine space, was still making users spin a dial to get the letters to print on the adhesive-backed tape..what if, we could attach a keyboard?…

Second, do the customers or users love the current service? If they don’t, there is room for another service or product opportunity. Said another way, if you not only find that they don’t love it, but HATE it…you are on your way to startup heaven. At JobDig, we simply took a look at the other employment weeklies in the marketplace, and found that only did employers not love the offerings, they could not even remember the name of the one they used.

Third, think value for money. There are businesses that are inherently susceptible to a creative entrepreneur who can dis-intermediate the offering, unless the business overhauls its business model completely. Obviously, most cannot. Basically, dis-intermediation means that you cut out the middleman or figure out a way to offer the same services for less money. I know real estate is going through this issue now, with companies like Zillow. Likewise, the contingency recruiter business, which finds its 25-33% of salary fee model under pressure today from companies like Dayak. But perhaps a future trend will be in the area of re-intermediation, where there is an undiscovered or under promoted value to the middleman who was eliminated. Levi’s started up a gi-normus website and then, closed it down. Another quick example: the GEEK SQUAD, a local computer service who would come to your home to help set up your computer. After Best Buy bought them, most think the services now are either too expensive ($350 for that?) or not customer-friendly.