Mission and vision statements are important ways for organizations to express their purpose and goals; they are also important methods of establishing organizational culture. Developing clear mission and vision statements provide "synergy" for the members of the organization, a sense of worth and direction; and a basis for planning and strategy (David, 2011, p. 50). Moreover, large organizations especially benefit from clear mission and vision statements in that they help the members to reconcile their differences and resolve divergent views (David, 2011, p. 50). A mission statement and a vision statement are similar in their impact on the organization, but different in that a mission expresses "who we are" and "reason for being," whereas a vision expresses "what we want to become," (David, 2011, p. 44-45). Mission statements set the tone and "ensure unanimity of purpose within an organization," and vision statements offer employees motivation for work that goes beyond mere profit (David, 2011, p. 47). It can be helpful to evaluate mission and vision statements, such as that of the United States Navy's Commander Operational Test and Evaluation Force (COMOPTEVFOR). On the COMOPTEVFOR website, the mission and vision statements are displayed clearly together on the same page with the taglines: "robust, repeatable, and defendable," and "quality, timelessness, communication." These keywords are integrated into...

The COMOPTEVOR mission and vision statements fall short on some counts, but in general they are effective in achieving their goals.
David (2011) offers a checklist for evaluating the quality of an organization's mission and vision statements. First, the mission statement should be less than 250 words. In the case of COMOPTEVFOR, the mission statement and the vision statement are each less than 250 words. This allows for a brief statement providing the "fine balance between specificity and generality," which is achieved here by COMOPTEVFOR (David, 2011, p. 50).

The COMOPTEVFOR mission and vision statements exhibit several weaknesses. For one, the mission and vision statements should be inspiring and "arouse positive feelings," (David, 2011, p. 50). The COMOPTEVFOR mission and vision statements are not inspiring; they are rather dry in tone and do not arouse positive feelings. Another weakness of the COMOPTEVFOR mission and vision statements is that they do not refer either to social or environmental responsibility. Some amendments could easily be made to include references to social and environmental responsibility, which might in turn inspire and arouse positive emotions.

However, the COMOPTEVFOR mission and vision statements do fulfill many other parameters of…