Mission Statements and Vision Statements

Imagine going to work each day, full of purpose and conviction. You strongly believe in your organization's values, and you are passionately committed to its mission.

Because you understand the good that your organization does in the world, you love what you do. You're happy to come into the office, and you put your heart and soul into your work, because you know it matters.

People can be genuinely inspired if their organization has a compelling vision and a clear, worthwhile mission; and these can be powerfully expressed in well-crafted mission and vision statements.

These statements can be highly motivating when they are expressed clearly and with intent, and when they are communicated effectively to everyone in your organization. They also express your organization's purpose to customers, suppliers and the media, on whom they can have the same effect.

In this article, we'll explore how to create motivating mission and vision statements.

Mission and Vision Statements Explained

These statements are the words leaders use to explain an organization's purpose and direction. When expressed clearly and concisely, they can motivate your team, or the organization as a whole, with an inspiring vision of the future.

The two statements do distinctly different jobs:

Purpose

Mission statements define your organization's purpose and its primary objectives. They are set in the present tense, and explain why you exist as a business, both to members of your organization and to people outside it. Mission statements tend to be short, clear and powerful.

Vision statements also define your organization's purpose, but they focus on its goals and aspirations. These statements are designed to be uplifting and inspiring. They're also timeless: even if the organization changes its strategy, the vision will often stay the same.

Application

Usually, people write these statements for an organization, or for an organizational unit or a team. You can also create statements to define the goals of long-term projects or initiatives.

Examples

Some examples of Mission Statements are shown below:

• Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (pharmaceuticals) – "To discover, develop, and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases."
• Walgreens (drugstores) – "Champion the health and well-being of every community in America."
• Nike (sportswear) – "To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world."
• The Dow Chemical Company (chemicals) – "Become the most innovative, customer-centric, inclusive and sustainable Materials Science Company in the world.
• Amazon (online retail) – "Our vision is to be earth's most customer-centric company."

Some examples of Vision Statements are shown below:

• PepsiCo (retail) – "Be the global leader in convenient foods and beverages by winning with purpose."
• Amnesty International (nonprofit) – "Our vision is a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments."
• Ikea (retail) – "To create a better everyday life for the many people – for customers, but also for our co-workers and the people who work at our suppliers."
• The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) (nonprofit) – "The vision of the ASPCA is that the United States is a humane community in which all animals are treated with respect and kindness."

How to Create a Mission Statement

To develop your mission statement, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Develop Your Winning Idea

First, identify your organization's "winning idea," or unique selling proposition (USP). This is the idea or approach that makes your organization stand out from its competitors, and it is the reason that customers come to you and not your competitors.

Step 2: Clarify Your Goal

Next, make a short list of the most important measures of success for your winning idea.

For instance, if it is to create cutting-edge products in a particular industry, how will you know when you've accomplished this goal? If your idea is to provide excellent customer service, what key performance indicator   will let you know that your customers are truly satisfied?

You don't have to include exact figures here, but it's important to have a general idea of what success looks like, so that you know when you've achieved it.

Combine your winning idea and success measures into a general, but measurable goal   . Refine the words until you have a concise statement that expresses your ideas, measures and a desired result.

Keep this statement in the present tense, and make sure it is short, simple   , clear, and free of jargon   . Yes, the language needs to be inspiring, but don't include adjectives just so it "sounds better."

Example 1

Produce store Farm Fresh Produce's winning idea is to "provide farm freshness." The owner identifies two key measures of the company's success: freshness and customer satisfaction. She creates the following mission statement, which combines the winning idea and her measures of success:

"To be the number one produce store in Main Town by selling the highest quality, freshest farm produce directly from farm to customer, with high customer satisfaction."

Example 2

Carl has just become the leader of a new team. The team will focus on one key project: streamlining the organization's internal databases, so that the entire system runs smoothly and without problems.

With this in mind, Carl creates a mission statement to guide his team's understanding of their purpose:

"Our team's goal is to streamline our organization's database management system within 12 months. We will develop a new system that is easy to use and reduces the frequency of user errors."

How to Create a Vision Statement

Step 1: Find the Human Value in Your Work

First, identify your organization's mission. Then uncover the real, human value in that mission. For example, how does your organization improve people's lives? How do you make the world a better place?

Our articles on working with purpose   and The Triple Bottom Line   include tips that you can use to find the deeper meaning in what you do.

Step 2: Distill Into Values

Next, identify what you, your customers and other stakeholders value the most about how your organization will achieve this mission. Distill these into values   that your organization has, or should have.

Some examples of values include excellence, integrity, teamwork, originality, equality, honesty, freedom, service, and strength.

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If you have a hard time identifying your organization's values, talk to your colleagues and team members. What values do they think the organization stands for, or that it should stand for?

Step 3: Combine Your Mission and Values

Combine your mission and values, and polish your words until you have an inspiring statement that will energize people, inside and outside your organization.

It should be broad and timeless, and it should explain why the people in your organization do what they do.

Example 1

The owner of Farm Fresh Produce examines what she, her customers and her employees value about her mission.

The four most important values that she identifies are freshness, healthiness, tastiness, and the "local-ness" of the produce. Here's the vision statement that she creates and shares with employees, customers and farmers alike:

"We encourage the families of Main Town to live happier and healthier lives by providing the freshest, tastiest, and most nutritious local produce from local farms to their table."

Example 2

Carl looks at the values that are key to achieving his team's goal, and considers their mission statement. He identifies several important values, such as challenge, dependability and teamwork. He then creates this statement that combines his team's mission and values:

"We will challenge our skills and abilities, and create a database system that's strong, dependable and intuitive, allowing our colleagues to work quickly and effortlessly."