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When you’re stuck in the trenches of urgent work, spending time to create a vision statement or mission statement could seem lofty and somewhat impractical, disconnected from your reality of endless tasks and projects. But if you don’t have a clear vision for your business, running after tasks and projects puts you on more of a treadmill than a true journey toward growth.
In most business operating systems, creating a vision and mission is a crucial component. If you want to get your team moving in the same direction, dive into how to create a mission statement and vision statement.
Mission vs vision
First, let’s clarify the differences between mission statement vs vision statement in business planning, as they often get muddied together in big-picture business thinking.
Your mission is your why. This is the reason your company exists — what you make, who you serve, and why you’re uniquely suited to offer your product or services. Typically, your mission is shared both externally and internally.
Your vision is what achieving your mission looks like. When your mission is achieved, how will your company be positioned in the minds of customers, peers, and the world? This is your vision statement, which is usually only shared internally to your team.
Why create a vision and mission statement for your business
Companies that are highly aligned under a common cause grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable. Investing time in a vision statement and mission statement can help your company grow in the following ways:
Rallying point for employees and customers
In most businesses, you don’t just want employees and customers: you want evangelists. You want to overhear your employees bragging about how much they love their work, and your customers referring their friends and family to you.
A vision statement is the perfect internal rallying cry that gives your employees a sense of how their work contributes to something bigger than themselves. A well-crafted mission statement will help make your customers feel good about your business, and better about recommending it to others.
Help you set better goals
Your vision statement is your big, hairy, audacious goal — one that may not come to fruition for a decade. In the meantime, you can create company goals that naturally lead up to your vision becoming reality.
For example, if your vision is to be the dominant provider of IT services in the Minneapolis metro area, and right now you have 12% of the market share, a yearly goal could be to increase your market share to 16%. It’s a bold but specific achievable yearly goal that gets you closer to your vision, much better than the vague goal of “increase market share.”
Guide decision-making
When you have a good, clear mission statement and vision, you have a North star that helps make bigger decisions easier. Anytime a big decision comes up, you can use your vision and mission statement as a litmus test: how does this initiative support our vision and align with our mission? If the answer is unclear, get back to the drawing board until you’re sure your decision aligns with your larger cause and goals.
How to write a mission statement
Now that you have a handle on mission vs vision and why they’re both important, let’s dive into crafting your mission statement!
Start with the following questions:
Why do you exist? If you’re a saltwater taffy shop, your “why” is serving delicious saltwater taffy to people. We recommend staying grounded and specific here so your mission statement feels true to you — while the saltwater taffy shop could say that their “why” is “bringing joy to people’s lives,” that’s not specific or relevant enough to be memorable.
Who are your target customers? Again, this is a good place to be specific, unless you’re already a huge global brand. If you’re a recruiting agency, your target customers should be a specific niche. This way you have the depth of expertise needed to offer the most relevant candidates and roles.
What makes us stand out? What’s your secret sauce? You could use a SWOT analysis to uncover your strengths, and decide which ones differentiate you in the marketplace.
Answering all three questions for our saltwater taffy shop could look like this:
Why do you exist? To serve delicious saltwater taffy.
Who are your target customers? People visiting San Diego’s bayfront.
What makes us stand out? Our old-world customer service and charm.
When writing your mission statement, you can mix and match the variables until you come up with a mission statement that feels good and memorable.
Mission statement example
We serve an exceptional and unforgettable old-world saltwater taffy experience to San Diego’s bayfront visitors.
How to write a vision statement
Now that you have a mission, it’s time to create a vision statement. Your vision should be what it looks like when your mission is accomplished. Some tips for when you’re crafting your business vision:
Use your company’s core values and mission statement to guide your vision.
Make sure your vision stays aligned with the other important guiding business documents you’ve generated. If you’re a CPG company and one of your core values is supporting organic farmers and heirloom agriculture, you’ll have to be realistic about the scale you’ll be able to achieve in your business; you won’t be able to become Nabisco unless you deviate from a core value. It’s better to stick to your core values to create your vision to stay aligned with what drew your customers and employees to you in the first place.
Brainstorm on what your company vision coming true looks like.
Don’t try to just nail your vision statement in one sentence. Brainstorm every aspect of what achieving your vision actually looks like, for you, your customers, and your employees. If you’re a software company and you want to build to go public, be specific about how many employees that would require, how much year over year growth you’d need, and how much of a market presence you’d need to have.
You should even brainstorm the finer details — are you and your cofounders retiring to live a billionaire’s life on a private island, bunker included? Or are you remaining with the company long-term and investing back into even further growth after your IPO? Every little detail might not make it into your vision statement, but it will help you develop a deeper connection to your vision.
Err on the side of incaution.
Your vision is not the place to hedge your bets— it’s where you can imagine your biggest, boldest goals. Maybe our bayfront saltwater taffy shop does so well in its mission that the owners are able to export their business model to other locations and grow a world-dominating franchise. If that’s what we want, we should include it in our company vision — “world domination through superior saltwater taffy” has a nice ring to it!
Questions to guide vision statement creation
Here are a few questions to ask to help you craft your vision statement:
What is your business’ position in the marketplace, your customer’s minds, the world?
- What impact will our company have on our industry, our customers, the world?
- Are you the number one provider of your services?
- Do you have the highest customer retention?
- Are you known worldwide or esteemed within a specific community?
Who works here and what kind of lifestyle do we have?
- Have we grown to a huge team, stayed small, or are we somewhere in between?
- Is everyone on the team working full throttle at all times or are we prioritizing work-life balance?
- How does our team change and still align to our core values?
- What does our employee retention look like?
- What kinds of benefits do people love about working here? (E.g. awesome health insurance, stock, above-average pay, PTO, cool off-site trips, etc.)
Why are customers drawn to us over all their other options?
- What are we doing that makes us irresistible to customers?
- What are the core values that we carry through to our biggest achievements?
- What kinds of customers do we have? Are we still in a specific target market or are we going global?
- What do our customers say about us? What does our customer retention look like?
What does success look like by the numbers?
- What’s your annual revenue and profit?
- How many customers do you have?
- What percentage of your total addressable market do you serve?
- How many languages or countries is your offering in?
- How much money are you taking home?
Clarify and summarize your vision statement
After you answer the questions above and really dream big about how your company will look when you accomplish your mission (and beyond), it’s time to distill your loftiest dreams into an aspirational statement your internal stakeholders can rally behind.
This is where you may choose to keep some parts of your vision private: if you plan on generating wild profits and a large take-home for yourself so you can create a billion-dollar Bond villain’s lair while minimizing pay and perks for your employees, you probably won’t want to include those aspects in your company vision. Choose instead the things that can inspire a wide variety of team members, like creating the best product or bringing a great service to people around the world.
When creating your final vision statement, keep these tips in mind:
- Be aspirational: make your vision statement as inspiring and motivating as possible
- Make it short and memorable: it should be easy enough for everyone in the company to know
- Use present tense: communicate your vision into existence
Vision statement example:
We’re a globally renowned saltwater taffy brand with brick and mortar locations from San Diego to Paris to Tokyo where our old-world charm and delicious taffy delights millions of people every year.
Make your vision and mission a part of your strategy
You’ve created a compelling, exciting mission statement and vision statement that your business can rally behind. Now what? Don’t let your mission and vision wither in the darkness — it’s time to make them both a part of your business strategy.
In Strety, our business vision tool gives you a place for your mission, vision, and large goals, as well as your core values and go-to-market strategy. We recommend working on your vision and goals and revisiting them during annual planning meetings. Then, store them in Strety’s business vision tool so the rest of your business operating system is tied to your highest aspirations.
Try Strety for free, or book a meeting with one of our product and business operating system experts for a tour.
