Effy is here to help people achieve their goal, and in business it’s called a mission statement. Yet, efficiency feels less and less relevant, without guiding vision or mission.

 

Business 101 – Mission statement

 

Economy and business courses generally start with an overview of vision, mission, values and strategies. To summarize, the idea is that before you start doing anything else, you should consider what is it that you want to achieve and offer. That are you here for, what is your mission. All the rest will derive from this. Your offerings, organization’s structure, internal values and policies, all should be tied in a coherent way to help you achieve your mission. Besides, how sincere and how well you convey your mission will also impact your collaborators’ motivation, stakeholder’s involvement and attractive to the market. This is the guiding light, and your success can be assessed on how close you are in achieving it.

That is business 101 theory…

Mission and financial success: coherent?

 

Business reality also says that you need profits to survive and that financial profits equal success. So now let’s play a game of coherence and see how these two matches. Here are Global 500 top 10 companies per profits for 2019 (source Fortune 500):

• Saudi Aramco – 111 MUSD
• Apple – 60 MUSD
• ICBC (Industrial & Commercial Bank of China) – 45 MUSD
• Samsung – 40 MUSD
• CCB (Construction Bank of China) – 38 MUSD
• JP Morgan – 32 MUSD
• Alphabet – 31 MUSD
• ABC (Agricultural Bank of China) – 31 MUSD
• BOA (Bank Of America) – 28 MUSD
• BOC (Bank Of China) – 28 MUSD

So these are companies with the greatest gap in volume between the sum of their revenues and the sum of their costs for the 2019 period (simple definition). They are a sample of what we could call financially successful companies.

Let’s now examine the top 5 vision & mission statements for fun.

Saudi Aramco:

Company	Vision	Mission	Source
Saudi Aramco	Saudi Aramco’s vision is to be the world’s preeminent integrated energy and chemicals company, operating in a safe, sustainable and reliable manner	Saudi Aramco strives to provide its shareholders with resilient value creation through crude oil price cycles by maintaining its preeminence in oil and gas production, capturing additional value across the hydrocarbon value chain and profitably growing its portfolio.	Annual report p16

• Saudi Aramco is a company owned by Saudis, that deals in energy (including oil). Their mission is clear, they work for their shareholders, and target to be a monopoly. They are successful. Their website also lists some corporate, social and environmental responsibilities they claim to adhere to, but I will let you balance how important these are against the company core mission when it comes to make business decisions.

 

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China & China Construction Bank:

Company	Vision	Mission	Source
ICBC	Vision Building a world-class and modern financial enterprise with global competitiveness by adhering to the principles of “delivering excellence, sticking to our founding mission, customers’ favorite, leading in innovation, security and prudence, and people-oriented”	Excellence for You —— Excellent services to clients, Maximum returns to shareholders Real success for our people, Great contribution to society	Annual report p4
CCB	Build a world class banking group with top value creation capability.	Provide better services to our customers, create higher value to our shareholders, build up broader career path for our associates, and assume full responsibilities as a corporate citizen.	Annual report p2

• ICBC & CCB are both Chinese state own banks, and as such you can see how similar their missions statements are. It’s almost risible. They are also completely abstract and without clear factual mission. So were they successful in achieving their mission? It’s simply irrelevant when you know how this sector works in China. Decision making is often done out of the company’s HQ, so why bother having  mission you cannot control. So here again, you can very much doubt about the authenticity of all corporate, environmental and social responsibilities and actions listed on their website.

Side note, I closed my personal ICBC account years ago, and always stayed away from CCB. At professional level, ICBC is definitely better in services and products than other Chinese state alternatives (CCB, BOC, ABC…), but still behind foreign or private banks. So at least for the customer part, it is a fail.

 

Apple & Samsung:

Company	Vision	Mission	Source
Apple
Samsung

• No need to present Apple and Samsung. However, their annual report and website do not list any clear vision of mission. Samsung corporate vision page is written in a very odd English and I do not speak Korean. Meanwhile, searching “mission statement” on Apple website lead to iTunes albums… I’m not sure what this means but no mission statement to report.

Where does that leave us?

 

So, looking at last year top companies for profits, we can very much doubt that financial success and mission achievement are linked, and it really makes us wonder if these companies have a mission for our benefit even though we do purchase their services, making them that profitable.

One oil company owned by princes, two banks owned by communists and two tech giants. This was just a random sample, but I invite you to go down the list.

No wonder Effy felt a bit useless these days…

 

G.M.