Years ago I was involved in “crafting a mission statement”. The negotiation / collaboration process resulted in *everybody’s* ideas and needs being shoehorned into one long, over-general, contorted sentence. First, you really had to struggle to parse the thing, and second, it could have applied to nearly any technology company, failing to distinguish our unique value. It was full of things like “optimizing shareholder value through innovative, customer-focused solutions.” Yeah, right… but what does the company *do*? And, almost as important, what do you *not* do?