Creating Clarity With Mission, Vision and Values Statements
Posting Mission, Vision and Values statements might make you feel good, but do they play a genuine role in the daily operation of your business?
The answer is a resounding “yes"!
Well-crafted Mission, Vision and Values statements help with goal setting and keep you and your team focused on what’s needed to achieve your business goals. In addition, they attract and retain the right target audience and make it easier to do business with them.
Done right, your Mission, Vision and Values statements will deliver:
Greater clarity. When you have a clear vision of where you’re going, it’s much easier to create the right strategies and action plans to get you there. You’ll evaluate opportunities more quickly and confidently to determine whether they truly are opportunities or simply distractions. Clear vision also makes you more disciplined about prioritizing time and resources because you’re laser-focused on critical business drivers rather than “nice-to-haves.”
Faster momentum. When your strategies and plans fully align with your values, you’ll be more energized and motivated to give 110% to everything you do. Your energy will be contagious to your team and also to prospects and customers, which will build momentum in your business. You’ll also find it easier to keep pushing forward during the tough times we all experience as business owners.
Better team alignment. Often business owners have a clear vision of where they want to take their business but either forget or are unable to clearly communicate their vision to their team. Mission, Vision and Values statements ensure everyone is on the same page and working toward common goals. They can help guide independent decision-making for sensitive customer touch points such as sales calls, marketing campaigns, and responses to customer inquiries.
Improved messaging and branding. Your Mission, Vision and Values statements can serve as a blueprint for shaping your sales and marketing messaging strategies, including what to say, where to say it and how to position your brand. Consistent messaging that reflects your values will attract people that align with them. This increases the odds that your prospects will decide to buy from you, become long-term customers and recommend you to family, friends and colleagues.
Creating a Mission Statement
Your Mission statement should function as a high-level action plan or framework that defines the day-to-day activities within your business. It should also explain your brand’s purpose in a way that connects with your team and also with customers.
Ideally, your Mission statement will answer the following questions:
What is your current purpose or goal for your business (i.e. what problems do you solve?)
Whom do you serve? (i.e. your target audience)
How do you serve them? (i.e. your product or service)
How do you serve them better than anyone else? (i.e. your UVP or unique value proposition)
While you will want to make your Mission statement as inspirational as possible, you’ll also need it to be specific enough that it can guide the everyday activities of you and your team. So use easy-to-understand language that reflects the culture you wish to foster within your business and is not open to interpretation.
Check out the following Nordstrom example.
Mission: To provide outstanding service every day, one customer at a time. A further focus is provided to Nordstrom employees at all levels with this Nordstrom goal, which is also a management mission. We work hard to make decisions in the best interest of our customers and those serving them.
Nordstrom’s Mission statement is quite lengthy, but it does provide clear direction to employees at all levels that they are to provide outstanding service to every customer and make decisions in the best interest of customers and those serving them.
It is also inspiring. Employees are given a clear sense of purpose and direction to serve with pride and excellence, which inspires them to take ownership of their work and make decisions that put customers first. Customers feel valued, appreciated and confident about receiving outstanding, personalized service, which creates a sense of loyalty and trust.
Crafting Your Mission Statement
If you’re not sure where to start with your Mission statement, try completing any of the following:
I/We provide…
I/We strive to…
I/We are dedicated to…
I/We are committed to…
I/We are passionate about…
I/We offer…
I/We help…
As an example, my Mission statement reads as follows:
Mission: I help entrepreneurs and small business owners refine and implement an effective marketing strategy that accurately reflects the unique value they deliver to customers.
If we break this down:
My purpose: to refine and implement marketing strategies for my clients.
Whom I serve: entrepreneurs and small business owners.
How I serve them: by helping them refine and implement a marketing strategy that is effective for their needs.
How I serve them better than anyone else: by ensuring their marketing strategy accurately reflects the unique value they deliver to customers.
There are a multitude of ways to write your Mission statement. The most important criteria are that it communicates the purpose of your organization in a way that resonates with employees and customers and provides a roadmap for determining the essential day-to-day business activities.
Sample Mission Statements
Compare the following Mission statements, which are structured differently but in their own way are equally effective at inspiring and providing direction.
Mission: Spread ideas, foster community and create impact.
Mission: Our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Mission: The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.
Mission: Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon.
Your Mission statement can change as your business grows and evolves. For example, you might achieve your initial business objective and decide to add a new product or service that complements and expands how you provide value to your customers. Alternatively, customer feedback or changing market conditions may require you to pivot in a new direction.
When changes of this magnitude occur, you’ll want to update your Mission statement so your customers can understand the new direction and your team members can fully align with and be inspired by it.
Creating a Vision Statement
A Vision statement is more future-focused than a Mission statement and reflects what you want the world to look like once you’ve accomplished your Mission. It guides the development of your overall business strategy and influences all major directional decisions. Unlike your Mission statement, your Vision statement won’t change very often, if ever.
Vision statements are aspirational goals that employees and customers can rally around and support. As such, they should be easy to remember and communicate. But because they are future-oriented, employees can't relate them to their everyday jobs as easily as a Mission statement.
Compare the following Vision and Mission statements and note how the Mission supports the Vision in each of the examples.
Mission: Our mission is to develop a people-centric cloud service that transforms the real-time collaboration experience and improves the quality and effectiveness of communications forever.
Vision: Video communications empowering people to accomplish more.
Mission: To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.
Vision: To create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.
Mission: The Alzheimer’s Association leads the way to end Alzheimer’s and all other dementia — by accelerating global research, driving risk reduction and early detection, and maximizing quality care and support.
Vision: A world without Alzheimer’s disease.
Mission: Becoming the leading sustainable global premium café brand.
Vision: Continuous growth through innovation and dedication to excellence.
Crafting Your Vision Statement
When developing your Vision statement, ask yourself:
What drove you to start your business and what is the key difference you want to make?
Whom are you trying to help, and why is it important that you help them?
Are you trying to change the status quo in some way?
Do you plan to introduce a more socially responsible product?
Are you looking to create more opportunities for a certain segment of the population?
Do you want to make a better world for future generations? If so, how?
These questions are important because your Vision statement should be personal. This will make it more meaningful not only for you but also for your team and the people you serve.
Here's the vision statement I developed for my business:
Vision: Equal opportunity for all business owners who have the courage to pursue their dreams.
My Vision statement is very personal to me because for most of my life, I lacked the courage to pursue my dream of owning my own business. And to be perfectly honest, I may never have done so if necessity hadn’t driven me to it. So I greatly admire those individuals who are brave enough to start a business on faith. They inspire me to want to leverage my extensive corporate marketing experience to help them be successful in ways I wish I’d had the courage to seek for myself.
Understanding what drives my Vision makes my Mission statement all the more relevant for me and also influences my Values, which we’ll be discussing shortly.
Developing your Vision statement is not easy, and it can be tempting to create something trite and generic like “make the world a better place” or “enable everyone to live in peace and harmony.” After all, many corporations do just that. But those Vision statements usually lack passion and ring hollow, and thus they don’t provide much inspiration to support them. (Which of the above Vision statements would you be more likely to rally behind – the one from Second Cup or the Alzheimer’s Association?)
So dig deep to uncover what truly inspired you to build your business. That way, you can consciously operate your business in complete alignment with your Vision and leverage your Vision to sustain you when times are tough.
As I previously stated, uncovering your Vision can be challenging, but experiencing an intense emotional reaction to an idea or visualization is a surefire clue that you're getting close.
Creating a Values Statement
Your Values statement shares the core principles and ethics your business is based upon. It provides clear direction to employees regarding how they can expect to be treated and how you expect them to conduct themselves while working for you. It also lets people outside your organization know what you stand for and how you will be showing up for customers, suppliers and the community at large.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when developing your Values statement:
What do you stand for, personally and professionally?
What behaviors do you value most in yourself and others?
How will you conduct your business activities to achieve your Mission and Vision?
How can I give my team members clear direction on how I expect them to treat my customers and each other?
Although one could answer these questions in extensive detail, your Vision statement should be memorable and actionable. This means it needs to be short and succinct. So zero in on what key values you believe best represent what you stand for and how you wish to run your company.
Your Values statement can be written in many different ways, from bullet points to complete sentences. Here are some examples.
Sample Values Statements
Values: (note the first letters of each word combine to spell HEART)
Humble
Empathetic
Adaptable
Remarkable
Transparent
Values:
We put people first.
We pursue excellence.
We embrace change.
We act with integrity.
We serve our world.
Values:
We Care For Our Company.
We Care For Our Customers.
We Care For Our Community.
We Care For Our Teammates.
We Care For Our Ourselves.
I’ve written and formatted my own Values statement as follows:
Values:
Integrity: My word is my bond.
Respect: I will treat everyone with equal kindness, consideration and compassion.
Commitment: I will always strive to show up as my best self.
Dedication: I will treat each client’s business as if it were my own.
Passion: I will give more than I receive.
Crafting Your Values Statement
It’s important that your Values statement aligns with your personal beliefs, or it will come across as inauthentic and insincere. This can cause employees or customers to doubt you are who you say you are, harming your company’s reputation in the process.
On the other hand, a Values statement that accurately reflects your beliefs will ensure you make decisions and take actions that align with your stated values. This builds trust with employees, who are more likely to buy into your Values statement and conduct themselves in accordance with it. As a result, they will provide a more consistent customer experience that will delight customers, earn their loyalty and build a stellar company reputation in the process.
The Bottom Line...
Mission, Vision and Values statements are often considered “nice-to-haves” to be created when you have time to develop them.
However, developing these three statements forces you to step back from the weeds and provides an opportunity to do a ten-thousand-foot analysis of whether your business is heading in the direction your heart wants it to go. You’ll find it easier to visualize and prioritize the strategies and actions needed to get you there, and you’ll feel a lot more energized and fulfilled along the way.
You’ll also have a blueprint for a messaging strategy that attracts the employees and customers you want to attract – the ones who align with your values and therefore are the most rewarding to work with.
After developing your Mission, Vision and Values statements, let me know if you’ve changed anything about your messaging strategy or business processes.
