MISSION & VISION DEVELOPMENT
Mission & Vision statements give clarity and ease for decision-making.
Your mission statement says what you do.
Your vision statement says why you do it.
Your mission explains how you solve problems for customers.
Your vision explains how you’ll solve problems for the world.
Your mission shows why your customers care.
Your vision shows why your employees care.
For you, your mission & vision statements are a guidepost for strategic decision-making.
Growth can be unwieldy, and your mission & vision keep everyone heading in the right direction.
Managing a Strategic Direction
What if I don’t remember our mission?
Clear mission statements keep your organization on track. Ideally, everyone should be able to recite the essence of your mission statement (don’t worry, it doesn’t need to be word-for-word). It helps you make decisions when you reach a fork in the road, and keeps your organization on track.
How do I reinforce our mission & vision to new employees?
It needs to be more than a phrase on your break room. Open meetings with them, talk about it during quarterly or annual reviews. If your mission & vision statements are written honestly, then you can use them to guide you in nearly every decision you have to make. (From big leadership decisions, to the smallest customer-service decision!)
How do I avoid the cringe of reciting mission & vision statements?
Yeah… It doesn’t feel “cool” to know or recite a mission or vision statement. But, if your strategic statements honestly reflect your organization and employees, it won’t feel cringey. Promise. They’ll feel proud that they’re making a difference.
I don’t have mission & vision statements. How do I write them?
Different strategists have different methods. You can hire one (like us!) Or, here’s our approach.
Mission statement: (1) write what you do in plain, like-a-5th-grader, way. (2) write who you do that work for (3) “Because,” write give a positive result of what you do. These three sections make up your longform mission statement. Want to get creative? Find some shorter, unique ways to explain that without losing its meaning.
Vision statement: what big, aspirational problem does your organization solve that can never truly be accomplished?
Start your next project:
1. Think: You talk, we listen, and then we transform research into an action plan.
2. Create: We translate ideas into words and pretty pictures.
3. Do: No matter the project, we guide you from setup to launch.
