Mission and Vision Statements Demystified

Hold on to your whiteboards, folks. I’d like to go full Corporate and talk about mission and vision statements. These pieces of company messaging sometimes get a bad rap—often for good reason. Typically drafted by committee, they can become refuges for platitudes, a lot of compromise and fuzzy thinking. 

Now, if you aren’t exactly clear about the difference between a mission and vision statement, you aren’t alone. Even the people who write them aren’t always sure.

Today, I’m going to set the record straight. 

Most mission and vision statements get little attention once they’ve been formulated. That’s because they weren’t created with a specific strategy in mind. Without a clear business purpose, they don’t drive behavior. 

So here’s Rule Number One: Your mission and vision statements are strategy. You should write them with specific goals in mind. And those goals should drive the way your team behaves.

Many leadership teams like to put their mission and vision statements on their website. Maybe they think this helps people see what big, ahem, goals they have. Here’s the problem: Most prospective clients just don’t care. When weighing one service provider over another, a firm’s mission and vision don’t even register. I’m not making this up. At Hinge, we’ve done the research. When asked what criteria buyers look for when choosing a firm, mission or vision never come up.  

That leads us to Rule Number Two: Your mission and vision should speak to an internal audience. They are not marketing messages. Instead, they are tools to motivate and steer your team.

Far too many mission and vision statements are too long and have little relevance to the people they are for. Lengthy lists of difficult-to-achieve goals or values aren’t going to stick in anyone’s mind. They might even be de-motivating if they seem out of touch or out of reach. 

Which brings us to Rule Number Three: Keep them short. One or two sentences at most. And write them in active, concrete language that will inspire your team. A good way to begin these statements is with the word “To”.

Now let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

What Is a Mission Statement?

Your mission statement should galvanize and inspire your team—and describe how your business is changing the world. 

Let’s look at an example, this one for an actual environmental engineering firm:

Our Mission

To overcome today’s most urgent global environmental challenges one community at a time. 

Does it fulfill the requirements of a mission statement? Let’s break it down. This firm aspires to address the world’s biggest environmental challenges. And it is doing it at the community level. Simple. Short. And inspiring.

Free Resource

The Brand Building Guide for Professional Services Firms

Download Now

What Is a Vision Statement?

Your vision statement describes your firm’s ideal future state. What do you want to achieve? And how do you want to be perceived?

Here’s how the same environmental engineering firm wrote theirs:

Our Vision

To become the nation’s leading environmental consulting and contracting firm, delivering meaningful, lasting change.

Whereas their mission statement focused on the firm’s larger purpose in the world—what motivates their team every day—the vision statement describes what they want to become. In this case, they want to become the top firm in their category. That may be a distant goal, but one they believe they can work toward and achieve over time. The concluding phrase, “delivering meaningful, lasting change,” softens their business goals, injecting their values and dedication to build better communities.

Your own mission and vision statements are likely to be very different from these. After all, your goals, culture and values are unique to your firm. But many firms have never thought about their purpose or top-level objectives in this way. The process of working on a mission and vision statement is incredibly valuable in itself. It forces you to focus your strategy and consider your business from new angles. 

Whether you tackle these exercises on your own or hire an experienced expert to help you, the process of distilling your business strategy into two concise statements can bring new energy, ideas and purpose to your team.