Updated April 24, 2023
Introduction to Mission Statement Business Plan
Often the goals and plans, which the company envisions for itself, are little-known facts to the people interacting with the system. There are many times when it is even necessary for people outside the organization to learn and understand what your organization is all about and what their chase is. This forms the revelation of the organization’s purpose, which is not often a widespread thought among your workforce and customers. In such scenarios, it’s even found that often employees are just carrying on work as instructed and need to be more for the company’s common goal. How will they? They need to learn about what it is.
Organizations look up to well-defined vision and mission statements at such times. These are short, powerful statements that sum up the organization’s aim and goal and make it clear that they mean business. In this article, we will dive deeper into knowing the vision and mission statements in detail and understand the best way of creating them. Today is your lucky day!
Understanding a Vision Statement
“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”
—Anonymous
Getting down to the core element of “vision” it would simply mean being able to see ahead and look out for the future. It’s your dream for the business. It’s the belief that the organization holds in the community it belongs to. This belief states and is made up of everything that the company needs to achieve to sustain itself. Your vision of the organization is how an ideal organization would look in your eyes.
When you establish a vision statement, you are making public the beliefs and principles that the organization will hold on to for as long as it thrives within the community it belongs to.
Listed below are characteristics peculiar to vision statements belted out by organizations. These vision statements should effectively:
- Be clear and precise.
- Contain a broad outlook and a great choice of words to encompass many perspectives.
- Be understood by your employees and team members.
- Bring a feeling of being a team among your employees and staff.
- Be inspirational and motivational to everyone pitching in.
- Be easy to remember and later on to communicate the message.
- Be short and sweet
Understanding a Mission Statement Business plan
“Only a clear, focused, and common mission can hold the organization together and enable it to produce results.”
—Peter F. Drucker
As a vision statement, a mission statement business plan looks at the big picture, similar to the vision statement. But this statement brings a lot of action-oriented connotations to the vision and makes it more concrete and solid. The mission statement business plan can refer to a problem the company is facing or a goal to be attained, and without going into the nitty-gritty of facts and figures, the statement provides a hint of the solutions that the company plans to implement to resolve the issue or the best possible route to getting to the goal.
Some of the characteristics reserved by the mission statement business plan are given as follows:
- Short – A mission statement business plan is always concise and straightforward, but not as fast as a vision statement. It gets to the point in one sentence.
- Action-oriented – The mission statement business plan will belt out the actions that the organization will be part of to achieve the set goal. With eyes on the outcome of the business, the mission statement business plan will adequately guide the employees and managers toward attaining that goal.
- Broad – Good mission statement quality will have a sense of a general outlook toward the goal to be achieved, encouraging multiple perspectives and views to help get there.
Vision Statement Quality vs Mission Statement Quality Business Plan
Following are the top differences:
Vision Statement Quality | Mission Statement Quality |
Outlines where the business wants to reach and ensures that you know of this purpose and the values that bind this dream. | Outlines how the business wants to reach its goals. It entails the objectives to be achieved in order to complete the vision. |
Answers the business question of “Where do we want to be?” | Answers the business question of “What do we do to get there?” and “How do we stand out from the crowd?” |
Talks about the organization’s future. | Talks about the present that can lead to the future that is envisioned. |
It shouldn’t change, ideally, but it can be improved after reviewing. | Change should be kept to a minimum. |
Steps to Create the Perfect Vision Statement
There are 6 steps to get you to the perfect vision statement for your organization. These will not only boost your goal and vision for the business but will also help cascade this vision to the rest of your organization, including your employees, management, and other staff. Once you have the vision statement prepared, the aim will come alive, and an entire organization will work towards fulfilling this vision.
1. Revisiting Your Business Strategy Plan
Whatever you need to build your vision statement is in your business’s strategic plan. This plan needs to be carefully revisited to find the common thread and the message your business is trying to convey to its customers and staff. Your strategic plan will include the following:
- Elevator pitch
- Business values
- Organizational goals
- Strength and opportunities
- Business story
You will need to tap on that aim and vision. Once you get there, you will be better positioned to think of your vision statement and how it will promote the business ahead.
2. Creating a Vision Board
Now that you’ve collected all the necessary information from your strategic plan for the business, it comes down to putting these pieces of data onto a vision board that can help you remain focused on creating a bold and powerful vision statement. You will have all the keywords needed to get a vision statement out and running in your organization. Allow your vision board to encompass within it all the essential elements that answer the following questions:
- What is the aim of your business?
- Who is your target audience?
- How do you intend to make a difference with your product and services?
- Which are the different problems that your business resolves?
- What is your purpose in starting this business?
- What makes you different?
3. Distilling to the Crucial Elements
Once you’re done with creating your vision board, which is now replete with a ton of information, you can now be able to distill through the many pieces of information and discard or remove those pieces that don’t matter to the core of your business plan. There will undoubtedly be many aspects that can be removed or merged with other information to create your vision statement.
The crucial elements you will be left with will form the skeletal structure for your vision statement. Since it plays this vital part, it needs to be perfect and flawless to eventually becomes drivers and influencers for your vision statement and, in turn, your business growth and accomplishments.
4. Writing It Down
Now is when you will cut through, sculpt, and polish these pieces of information into your vision statement. You will use the skeleton as your framework and build a phrase or a sentence around it that will encompass the entire vision you have for the business in a precise and concise manner. Keep a few things in mind while writing through the vision statement. They are as follows:
- Keep it short and accurate to keep the reader engaged
- Keep the language simple to understand
- The focus on the way the business helps your customers
5. Asking for Opinions and Feedback
Create a pool of people from varied functions in your organization, such as your team members, people from other departments, your senior board members, and customers, and ask them for their opinion on the vision statement that you’ve created.
Since there’s no hard and fast rule in precisely wording your vision statement, you must follow your instinct and the feedback you receive from people inside and outside your organization. These individuals will give you the correct real-world view of how the vision statement would affect the masses.
6. Reviewing Your Work
As your business grows, keep the check and review your vision statement often to ensure that your business is running as per your original goal and aim. Think of ways to improve your vision statement at all times.
Steps to Create the Perfect Mission Statement
The following are the different steps:
As you already have your vision statement prepared and have your approvals and self-belief in this statement, creating a perfect mission statement quality shouldn’t be very far-fetched now. The vision statement becomes an ideal stepping stone for building the mission statement quality. In the practical sense, this now makes the mission statement business plan more manageable than the vision statement. The following 3 steps will give you a great insight into how to get to the perfect mission statement business plan:
1. Knowing Your Vision Statement Inside-Out
To master the art of writing a mission statement business plan, you will need to know your vision statement so thoroughly that your mission statement business plan will come to you almost naturally. The first step is always the vision statement; from there, the mission statement will emerge.
2. Writing It Down
Your vision statement is all you need to take a break from the mission statement goals for your organization. Go on and write your thoughts down once you are through with your vision statement. All you need to ask yourself is, “What do you need to achieve the vision maintained in the vision statement?”
The mission statement goals will surely be customer-centric instead of the vision statement. They will also need to be approached using the question: “What must I do for the customers involved in this vision for my organization?”
Here are some of the things you need to keep in mind when drafting this life-changing statement:
- Your mission statement goals shouldn’t cover everything that the business does precisely. But ensure that the core task is highlighted so people know what the organization is about.
- Use keywords and add a little up-step to the language; keep it light.
- Use more than one sentence to elaborate on what your company is and how they are to achieve the vision it has been harboring.
- Keep it customer-focused.
- Understand market standard and competition features while writing down the mission statement goals (this should be present in your strategic plan and within the vision statement)
3. Reviewing Your Work
Keep constantly looking for your mission statement goals and how the business is against them. The progress of your business will be in adhering to the mission statement goals. It can be used as a measurement to check on the growth of your business and organization.
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