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I loved this quote: > “Employees are wising up to the fact that you can have a mission statement on your website, but when you’re looking at how the company cr

• sjg007 8y ago
  Chomsky talks about this.
  • nemild 8y ago
    Any chance you know the pieces where he most focuses on this?
    • sjg007 8y ago
      Here's a summary post: https://medium.com/@wtfmitchel/the-political-nature-of-industry-bb2dac5c51c1 https://medium.com/@wtfmitchel/the-political-nature-of-indus... I guess I would read some of his books: Profit over People and the one on Media. He has a 1997 talk at northeastern on youtube where he addresses it a bit during question time.
      • wallace_f 8y ago
        There are some good thoughts and complaints in there about propaganda and nepotism, but isn't this old news? Isn't it also pervasive throughout society? I mean, there are even blatant industry-wide propaganda agendas such as Harvard scientsts lying about sugar, MIT scientists lying about climate change, and scientists lying before courts about leaded gasoline... Of course always after payments from profit-seeking industry. There are countless examples. Of course Walmart is known for both nepotism, and brainwashing their employees about union membership. And of course they are also close with the top-echelon of politicians at state and federal levels. Like the article mentions, companies say they are progressive, and for an example， promote gender equality, but their engineering divisions tell a completely different story. And then if you really take a moment to stop and look around the world we live in, we are in a society full of propaganda. Of course the War on Drugs, War on Terror, and War on Poverty all increased poverty, poor outcomes related to drugs, and removal of liberties and prosperity that terrorists sought for. Over the last year, MSNBC covered Stormy Daniels on average >1/day. War in Yemen? 0 times. Or, here is Wolf Blitzer saying that arms sales to Saudis is a "moral issue" because defense contractors will "lose jobs." Propaganda is part of our daily lives. My favorite Einstein quote is: "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
        • sjg007 8y ago
          I think if you read Chomsky you will find that we've been lead this way for a long time. It is modus operandi.. aka meet the new boss same as the old boss. It's useful to understand the world and why it is the way it is. And in fact the more interesting idea is that we the people can actually exercise our democratic rights to change the situation.
      • DenisM 8y ago
        An aside. Chomsky made a sizable contribution to intellectual criticism of the modern imperialism. I wonder who will pick up the reins when he's gone?
        • tanderson92 8y ago
          Matt Taibbi in collaboration with Chomsky is writing a sequel to Manufacturing Consent, discussing history and the media environment since its publication. I'm not suggesting he is an heir, only that interested readers might check out.
          • ctchocula 8y ago
            Obligatory link: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/introduction-the-fairway https://taibbi.substack.com/p/introduction-the-fairway This was very insightful for me. I enjoyed how he interpreted Manufacturing Consent and pointed out that the obvious interpretation is mistaken i.e. that the media peddles lies. The thesis is more subtle than that.
• sorokod 8y ago
  PR mission
• p1necone 8y ago
  My assumption with mission statements was that they were always bullshit made up by a marketing team or some exec and I wouldn't expect them to have much relation to reality. Was I in the minority?
  • samplatt 8y ago
    Not at all, but it's important to know that they're not universally bullshit. The last two companies I've worked for (both <1k people) have genuinely valued their mission statements, and finally incentivise results that exemplify it.
  • ryanbrunner 8y ago
    Ironically I think Facebook is one example that (at least in the early days) had values that actually had teeth. "Move fast and break things" isn't just a feel-good truism like most values that companies come up with are. It's something that at least some people are going to disagree with, and it's something that can actually be instructive when making a decision at that company. I don't personally agree with it, but I respect that at least in the past Facebook was willing to take a stance on how they developed products that wasn't some saccharine feel-good BS that values usually are.
    • jnwatson 8y ago
      "Break things" like democracy, I guess.
      • bryanrasmussen 8y ago
        Move fast and say oops, we'll try to do better.
      • jrockway 8y ago
        It might actually be that things like election interference came up so quickly that their problem was not moving fast enough to stop it before it was a problem. If their motto was "observe the problem for a year and have at least thirty-three planning meetings before making a decision", would they have addressed the problem better? Probably not. The problem was that they didn't move fast enough and break enough things.
• mcrad 8y ago
  Fun fact: Nike's mission is to do everything possible to expand human potential. https://www.economist.com/business/2018/08/02/mission-implausible https://www.economist.com/business/2018/08/02/mission-implau...
  • crunchlibrarian 8y ago
    This is like something a stoned frat boy would come up with as their first attempt at a mission statement.
    • 1stcity3rdcoast 8y ago
      Sure, but is it wrong?
      • PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        Insofar as it's absolutely not what Nike does at all, I suppose you could call it "wrong", yes.
      • TulliusCicero 8y ago
        I dunno about wrong, but it's too vague to be useful.
  • awakeasleep 8y ago
    My friend was contracted to do some marketing for Frito-Lay and according to the team that hired them, Frito Lay's mission was to capture the 30% of non-prepackaged food eaten by Americans. Their public mission statement is a bit more innocuous: At Frito-Lay, delighting our consumers is job No. 1. To us, that means putting consumers first in every decision we make - from the quality and care that goes into making our snacks to the ways in which we give back to the community and care for our environment.
    • Simon_says 8y ago
      What? Don't they exclusively make prepackaged food?
• hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  Mission statements are always bullshit. The reason being that I have never seen a case where, when push comes to shove, that a company would forgo needed revenue if it contradicted their mission statement. Instead what happens is that leaders go through mental gymnastics trying to show "No, it still aligns with our mission statement, you just have to twist the meaning of the words in the mission statement beyond any reasonable recognition."
  • e7mac 8y ago
    This Weird Al song captures this perfectly - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4
  • nostrademons 8y ago
    Usually mission statements are crafted to align incentives between employees and customers (or users, if the product you sell to customers is users' attention). The company's mission should focus on what the customer is trying to achieve with the company's product. As the company works toward that mission, customers accomplish their goals, they become dependent upon the product, they fork over lots of money, and the company's revenues rise naturally. Where this fails is when a company actually achieves its mission. At that point, its original mission is taken for granted, but all of the negative consequences of that mission are suddenly on everyone's mind. For example, Microsoft's original mission was "A computer on every desk, all running Microsoft software." Throughout the 80s and early 90s, that meant making MS-DOS and Windows easier to use, making Office handle more of the tasks needed for a modern office, and getting distribution deals so that all of these came pre-loaded. Customers benefitted from the increasing computerization, they forked over lots of money, Bill Gates became the richest man on earth. But after around 1998, Microsoft basically succeeded in that, people already had a computer on their desk running Microsoft software, and the biggest problem on their minds was that Microsoft had a stranglehold on PC software and was unfairly killing off new innovations in software. Google's initial mission statement was "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." When search sucked, email sucked, online maps weren't a thing, finding a book meant going to a library, finding an academic paper meant forking over hundreds to Elsevier, and "web browser" meant IE6, this was a huge service to humanity. But then around 2010, they succeeded at all of these, the baseline became "I can find anything I want now", and the huge questions were what kind of information does Google have on us and what sort of nefarious purposes could they use it for? Facebook's mission was "Make the world a more open and connected place." The world is now a more open and connected place. The result is that people are routinely put in contact with folks whose views they find abhorrent, and that you can influence an election from the other side of the world, and that Facebook has all our personal data. While the world was still cut off from each other, everyone was happy to sign up; now that we're all on one big social network, they're miserable. Once the mission statement is no longer a problem that needs solving, then the bullshit starts. Without an actual reason for the company to exist or for anyone to do the work they're ostensibly doing, people fall back on "Well, might as well make as much money as we can."
• hanniabu 8y ago
  It's basic marketing. Draw in the followers under false pretense, then all you have to do is worry about maintaining them which is much easier than bringing them in under honest terms. This can be seen in politics as well. How often do electees follow what they were promising constituents while in the running. Then they'll do the same thing again and make a big fuss for the week or 2 prior to reelection, then go back to business as normal. Likewise with products. Get the customer to come into the store, visit your website, or call a number. Then by the time they see it, or in some cases have already made a purchase, and find out thing aren't as advertised it's either already too late with s purchase made or they've "come too far" and the shortfalls are close enough to where they shrug and purchase anyways.
• deleted 8y ago
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