No magic bullet for mission statements

WrightStudio / stock.adobe.comA veterinary practice mission statement?

“I think I wrote it 20 years ago,” said one practice owner. “I don't know what it says anymore.”

That's typical, Bash Halow, LVT, CVPM, told his audience Thursday at Fetch dvm360 in San Diego.

But a great mission statement can do so many wonderful things for a business, especially healthcare businesses like veterinary hospitals. A good mission statement can:

• Identify what separates your hospital from the competition

• Breathe vitality into your day-to-day operations

• Make leading easier

• Inspire everyone in the hospital to live up to everything they can be

In its most basic form, a good mission statement is a sentence or two that merges what your business does with how your business does it. It's not a vision statement, or where you'd like to be in the future. It's not every fundamental belief that the leaders and employees of the practice live, although those core values can infuse it. Rather, it's who you are and what you do.

“It starts with the mission statement, and then the end product is a dialogue,” Halow said. “It's the start of a never-ending dialogue with everyone about what you want to accomplish and how to accomplish it.”

Ideally, Halow said, a hospital should have a written mission statement, but he's been in practices without one and they were fabulous: “They didn't have a mission statement, and that practice owner wore that fact like a sandwich board. They lived their statement.”

After selling attendees on the power of a mission statement for leading, managing, training and hiring staff, Halow had one idea for getting started making one: Ask yourself: “When was the last time you had a great day at work? What happened? And why were those things important to you?”

That'll get you started.