Crafting a Mission Statement by General George S. Patton Jr.

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C.K. Prahalad, one of the leading strategic consultants, has said that a mission statement should take less than three minutes to explain to an audience.

General George Patton with troops

That is absolute horseshit.

Imagine making a declarative statement and then having to take an additional three minutes to explain what you just said.

A mission statement should be immediately comprehensible. Three minutes of explanation is three minutes too many.

I read a book on George Patton this weekend. Here is his mission statement for the Third Army:

I don’t want to get any messages saying that “we are holding our position.” We’re not holding anything! Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding on to anything except the enemy. We’re going to hold on to him by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass.

And most of that I included just for context. It really could be shortened to

We’re going to hold the enemy by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass.

It clearly states the goal of the organization, and it doesn’t need a three-minute explanation, does it?

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Concord Hymn

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Washington taking command of the army

On this date in 1775, the first shots in the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord . . .

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, are sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heros dare
To die and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Nice Try, Kid

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Depression occurs in up to 10 percent of youth, and 1,883 10- to 19-year-olds killed themselves in 2001. Some 1.8 million teenagers attempted suicide that year, a quarter of them requiring medical attention, according to Columbia University scientists . . .

— CNN.com, “FDA issues suicide caution for antidepressants”

Out of 1.8 million attempts, only 1,883 successes?! What methods are they employing to get a success rate of 1 in 1,000?

That’s not very good . . .

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Less Than Zero

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More whittling away at logic and critical thinking . . .

WASHINGTON (AP) — Patients on some popular antidepressants should be closely monitored for warning signs of suicide, the government warned Monday in asking the makers of 10 drugs to add the caution to their labels.

— CNN.com, “FDA issues suicide caution for antidepressants”

Read more

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Best Explanation of the Spanish Election Results

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Even the mere threat of Islamic terrorism has for several decades been very effective at steering European nations’ foreign policy. Going back further consider the Germans in the 1930s and early 1940s. A small minority of people living in Europe had an ideology and the will to use violence to back up that ideology. Without a whole lot of effort or actual force they were able to conquer nearly every other European nation and convince those Europeans to accept major elements of their ideology. European democracies appear strong but apparently are easy to control by anyone who threatens to disrupt the bourgeois comforts of the populace. Nor do Europeans have the internal strength to dislodge violent minorities who’ve gained control of their societies. In the 1940s it was the leveling of German cities by the British and American air forces and Soviet artillery that convinced Europeans of the impracticality of Naziism.

— Philip Greenspun

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John Kerry, International Man of Mystery

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I’ve met foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, ‘You’ve got to win this, you’ve got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,’ things like that.

— John Kerry

‘In terms of who he’s talked to, we’re not going to discuss that,’ spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said yesterday. ‘I know it would be helpful, but we’re not going into that. His counsels are kept private.’

— The Washington Times, “Kerry fails to back up foreign ‘endorsements'”

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A Brief History of Democratic Statesmanship

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Speaking at Columbia University in 1959, a student challenged the 33rd President [Harry Truman], a Democrat, on dropping the second A-bomb. ‘The reason I asked this,’ the student said, ‘was that it seemed to me the second bomb came pretty soon after the first one.’ After speaking testily of ‘Monday morning quarterbacks,’ Truman said simply: ‘I was there. I did it. I would do it again.’

— Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal

KERRY: I think George Bush rushed to war without exhausting the remedies available to him, without exhausting the diplomacy necessary to put the U.S. in the strongest position possible, without pulling together the logistics and the plan to shore up Iraq immediately and effectively.

TIME: And you as Commander in Chief would not have made these mistakes but would have gone to war?
KERRY: I didn’t say that.

TIME: I’m asking.
KERRY: I can’t tell you.

— TIME magazine, March 7, 2004

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