Creating a Mission Statement

We had one of "those" meetings today, and I have to tell you, it was more productive than I thought it might be. We focused on a coherent vision and coherent, plausible, and not ostentatious mission statement. I based my viewpoint on the mission of the Starship Enterprise, and focused my input on this one question that I felt the mission statement must provide an answer to: "For any action X that we do, is it accomplishing the mission statement?" The Enterprise's original mission was to do *something*, but it doesn't define or limit the parameters of how the mission is to be accomplished. The mission statement is also not about a milestone or final goal, but rather how the journey of success will be measured.

In essence, clearly and concisely we created a statement that tells our group and others who we are, and what our ultimate goals for measuring the success of our accomplishments may be. That enabled us to make a reasonably generic statement of goal/mission (our mission is to do genericly good thing X in order to accomplish broad continuous goal Y). "Did what we accomplish today further our ability to accomplish broad continuous goal Y?" Your mileage may vary.

Also, try not to split your infinitives, if at all possible.