What it is and how it can fuel your business
The simplest definition I can give to a mission statement is: a promise directed to somebody. Every business is committing to doing something in a certain way for somebody that needs what that business has to offer.
First, clarify what you are doing, how and for whom. Then, you can start thinking how far you want to get with whom you or your business are right now. While the mission expresses your cause and purpose (why do you exist, what do you do), the vision details your aspiration on how the business will bring impact to be able to pursue that cause.
Let’s differentiate them through some examples:
Feeding America
Mission: Our mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger.
Vision: A hunger-free America. While the Vision of Feeding America may seem impossible, the mission is really actionable, focused and clear.
Uber: We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion. Uber doesn’t just drive people around town, they are igniting opportunity, by giving people the chances to get to their important meetings and events and to help them get their things done.
Simon Sinek is the one expressing beautifully the importance of your Mission and Vision: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. So don’t try to just oversell your product features, tell people what you are trying to achieve and make them part of it, let them contribute.
Apple isn’t about selling personal computers, it’s about ‘thinking different’ and challenging the status quo.
Airbnb isn’t about short-term rentals. It’s about connecting people so that you can belong anywhere.
What’s the deal with the Mission, anyway?
Well, the biggest deal is that it is your business itself. It is why you exist, what do you do and it shows the world how you are different.
It gives you internal and external alignment by communicating clearly what you do. It is the cornerstone of your culture by showing how you do things. And on top of that, it pushes you to act!
The objective of a well-defined mission is to communicate clearly the goals you’ve set to achieve in the short and medium-term, but to also mark your uniqueness in the world or in the market.
How to define your mission
There is no living who isn't capable of doing more than he thinks he can do. Henry Ford
The process of defining your mission should start from the very first moment you’re thinking of starting a business. The Mission encompasses your very existence as a business, so it should be clear before you start anything. Before you get to articulating it, answering the following questions first might help:
Purpose Why do you do it? Why does your business exist? What problems are you trying to solve?
Action How are you going to do it? How are you any different from your competitors? What unique solutions do you propose?
Impact For whom are you going to do it? What’s the span of your impact? If your business didn’t exist as of tomorrow, who will miss you and how much? How will you change the world or the market by what you are doing?
There is no absolute recipe to define a Mission, but by taking into consideration the key elements of it, we propose the following steps:
What do you do? A straight to the subject verb will be of help. State simply what you do, what is your activity. TED just wants to “Spread ideas”. How powerful are these two words? They are not setting any boundaries, which makes their mission even bigger and engaging.
Why do you do it and how will you do it? Here you can express the pain or the problems that made you come up with your business to implement the solutions. Tesla exists “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”. They want sustainable energy for the world. They are not just contributing to it, they are accelerating it. Sometimes your reason might be a group of people, so your “why” might imply to whom you are addressing your services. Kickstarter wants “To help bring creative projects to life” and this implies that they are helping creative people build their projects and startups. Spotify tells us really clear how they are planning on unlocking the potential of human creativity — by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.
Impact Declare your geographical impact or mention the people your business exists for. Are you planning on doing your business for everyone on Earth or for a certain group of people or in a well-defined region? What big wave are you going to create with your business? Will you ignite a movement? Will you help a community? What’s your span of action?
How will you know if you crafted the right and successful mission for your business or for you?
Actionable: you’ll know right away what it is to be done;
Unique: it is clear why people should choose you over another;
Motivational: it engages people to work with you by sharing the same motivations;
Sharp: it sees right through your vision;
Possible: it will give people just the right chills to start working on it, because they will know that what you want to do is big, but it can be done.
The mission also leaves room for flexibility, so “the how” can change according to the opportunities or the challenges you have to face. Contrary to popular opinion, having a mission doesn’t stop you from adapting. On the contrary, it is advised to be agile and really open to your context and environment.
If there is a crucial take away from everything you’ve read so far, it is: be authentic. You can’t commit to the world to build a sustainable environment but you’re building a highly polluting factory. Well, technically you can do anything.
One can promise to help people but give bad treatments to their employees. What will happen to their business, it’s something we can all predict.
Having a well-crafted mission is equally important to having a well-implemented mission. And a well-crafted mission it’s not literature, it’s about committing to it and acting by those words with conscientiousness and creativity.
Now, the heartbeat of how you achieve it lays in your Values. How you unfold them, give them the right words and live them across anything you do? You have a lot of help here. Check out other resources or find the product that gives you the right tool to accompany you in your journey.
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