At Thursday’s meeting we will vote to approve our Mission and Values Statement.
As a double check, I asked a couple of AI’s for feedback. I agree with its assessments and think some of the alternatives it suggested are better than what we came up with. But I’d also like the community’s take on it before we vote. Please let me know.
My city just proposed this as a mission statement. Please analyze and tell me what you think
“Des Moines is a waterfront community committed to building a safe, sustainable environment, by providing a high quality of life for all to live, work and play.”
Strengths:
- Geographic identity – Immediately establishes Des Moines as a waterfront community, which helps set it apart and emphasizes a key asset
- Balanced priorities – Addresses environmental, social, and economic aspects through safety, sustainability, and quality of life
- Inclusivity – Uses “all” to indicate the city serves everyone
- Active language – “committed to building” shows ongoing dedication and progress
- Lifestyle completeness – Includes “live, work and play” to cover all aspects of community life
Areas for consideration:
- Specificity – Could be more specific about what “high quality of life” means in concrete terms
- Measurability – Lacks clear metrics or indicators to measure success
- Distinctiveness – Besides the waterfront reference, much of this could apply to any city
- Redundancy – “Environment” appears both literally and in the concept of sustainability
- Grammar – The comma after “environment” is unnecessary and disrupts the flow
Would you like me to suggest some potential revisions to make the statement more distinctive to Des Moines or more actionable?
You’re right – let me analyze this purely from a logical structure standpoint:
“Des Moines is a waterfront community committed to building a safe, sustainable environment, by providing a high quality of life for all to live, work and play.”
The logical problems:
- The causality is backwards. The statement says they are “building a safe, sustainable environment BY providing quality of life.” This implies that providing quality of life is the method used to build the environment, which doesn’t make logical sense. The environment would be one of the factors that creates quality of life, not the other way around.
- The structure creates a circular reference:
- They’re building an environment
- By providing quality of life
- For people to live in (the environment)
- “Environment” is used ambiguously – it could mean either the natural environment or the general surroundings/conditions, making the sustainability commitment unclear.
A logically coherent version would need to either:
- Make quality of life the end goal, with environment as one of the means
- Make environmental sustainability the end goal, with quality of life as a benefit
- Present them as parallel goals rather than one causing the other
Would you like me to demonstrate how it could be restructured to resolve these logical issues?
Please.
As parallel goals: “Des Moines is a waterfront community committed to maintaining a safe, sustainable environment while ensuring a high quality of life for all to live, work, and play.”
With quality of life as the end goal: “Des Moines is a waterfront community committed to providing a high quality of life for all to live, work, and play through environmental sustainability and public safety.”
With environmental sustainability as the end goal: “Des Moines is a waterfront community building a safe, sustainable environment that enables a high quality of life for all to live, work, and play.”
Each version eliminates the original’s problematic causality and presents a clear relationship between the city’s priorities. The choice between them would depend on which element the city considers its primary focus.
Would you like me to break down the logical structure of any of these alternatives?
No. That was very helpful. 🙂