MISSION: BULLSHIT
Every company has a mission statement. And every mission statement says the same thing.
We’re committed to excellence.
We value integrity, innovation, and inclusion.
We aim to empower communities and create sustainable impact
Blah dee fucking blah.
It’s all the same. Whether it’s a community health centre or a multinational arms dealer, they’ll slap some version of “diversity and excellence” on their homepage and expect you to swallow it. It doesn’t matter what they do—food banks, fashion, fossil fuels—they all belt out the same jargon. Swap the logo, and you’ll never know the difference.
If you read this – “We specialize in solving complex challenges, advancing scientific discovery and delivering innovative solutions that help our customers keep people safe” – would you guess it's Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest arms dealer?
Lockheed makes AGM-114 Hellfire missiles for Israel’s Apache helicopters—missiles that have been raining down on Gaza. Between October 7 and November 14, 2023, around 2,000 Hellfires were delivered to Israel. Tens of thousands of civilians, men, women, children, babies were killed.
Purdue Pharma’s mission includes “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. Integrity. Courage”. This is from the people behind OxyContin. From 2000 to 2024, over 1.1 million Americans died from drug overdoses, mostly from opioids. Purdue didn’t kill them all—but they’ve got blood on their hands. That is almost the same number of US military deaths (1.3million) in ALL American wars from and including the Revolutionary War which started in 1775.
Perdue Farms' (no relation to Perdue Pharma) mission is "to be the most trusted name in food and agricultural products”. These fuckers have just been fined for using child labour. They had children, barely out of primary school, wielding and using electric cutting equipment on overnight shifts. What the actual fuck!
ExxonMobil promises to “maintain high ethical standards” and “run safe and environmentally responsible operations.” They’ve been fined $14.25 million for thousands of Clean Air Act violations at their Baytown refinery alone.
The Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground on a reef on March 24, 1989. Decades later, Prince William Sound, Alaska, is still feeling the effects. Photo by RGB Ventures
Australian banks say they’re guided by “Care, Courage, and Commitment.” You don’t hear so much about the twenty-three million breaches of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws. Billions in penalties—just the cost of doing business.
These aren’t values. They’re camouflage.
Mission statements are perfunctory garbage. They mean nothing.
The companies dumping oil into rivers are “committed to sustainability” The consulting giants strip-mining the public sector are proud of their “transparency". These things aren’t for the people affected by their actions—they’re for shareholders, staff morale, and tender applications. So that investors (the ones that do care) can sleep at night.
There’s no real accountability in them, no specific pledges. Just a gentle vague idea of purpose.
And public institutions aren’t immune either. Councils, hospitals, NGOs—they’ve all caught the mission bug. Everyone’s “walking alongside communities,” “building capacity,” “embedding trauma-informed practice”... meanwhile the funding’s slashed, the staff have scratched deep stress-wounds into their scalps.
It’s dangerous. When every company claims to be “inclusive,” “equitable,” and “community-led,” the words stop meaning anything.
The bosses who sign off on these statements don’t believe them either. They know it’s bollocks. Mission statements are supposed say what an organisation stands for. Instead, they’re saying what the companies think is a good corporate citizen would do. If you want to know what a company believes in? Don’t read the mission statement, look at who’s on the board. Follow the money. Track how they treat their lowest-paid staff. That’s the real mission.
What would an honest mission statement look like?
We’re here to grow as fast as possible, avoid taxes, and burn out idealistic graduates in internships (ha - free fucking labour). We don’t give a shit that our customers are a few bucks away from giving hand jobs to strangers to get by - the shareholders are happy.
Now that’s honesty
Spare us the “empowerment” the “excellence” the “ethics” and the “empathy”.
Mission statements don’t show us who you are.
Your actions do.