STRATEGIC

MANAGEMENT
A Mission Statement defines the company’s business, its
objectives and its approach to reach those objectives. A
Vision Statement describes the desired future position of
the company. Elements of Mission and Vision Statements
are often combined to provide a statement of the
company’s purposes, goals and values. However,
sometimes the two terms are used interchangeably. Usage
and satisfaction among survey respondents.
Companies use Mission and Vision Statements to:
Internally:
• Guide management’s thinking on strategic issues,
especially during times of significant.
• Change help define performance.
• Standards Inspire employees to work more productively
by providing focus and common goals.
• Guide employee decision
• Making help establish a framework for ethical behavior
Externally:
•Enlist external support.
•Create closer linkages and better communication with
customers, suppliers and alliance partners.
•Serve as a public relations tool.
The mission statement must reflect the values, beliefs, and
philosophy of operations of the organization and reflect
the organizational culture. The mission statement should
reflect attainable goals. The mission statement should be
worded so as to serve as an energy source and rallying
point for the organization.
Money is a by-product of value. So, to thrive in the long run,
businesses must remain focused on producing value. However, it’s
easy to lose sight of value creation and get sidetracked by other
things like profit margins, expanding your product catalogs, or
competitors. To become a runaway success, businesses must have
a purpose that unites and inspires people – “make more money”
won’t do the trick. As the author Simon Sinek said, “People don’t
buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
This is why organizations create mission and vision statements.
These statements unify the organization and keep everyone
focused on what really matters – because if you get these things
right, the profits will follow.
What’s the Difference Between a Mission Statement and a Vision
Statement?
The mission is the “what” and the “how,” and the vision is the
“why. "The mission statement defines what an organization does
and includes tangible goals which the organization strives to
accomplish. The vision statement, meanwhile, should clarify the
aspirations of the organization and define the direction it’s heading
in.
Does Your Business Need Mission and Vision Statements?
Mission and vision statements are signposts. Effective mission and
vision statements will unify the focus of an organization – for the
organization and their target audience.
Okay, but what if you’re only just starting a business? Well,
whether you’re a massive corporation or a solopreneur, you can
use mission and vision statements to gain clarity and ensure that
you consistently make decisions in line with your ultimate goals.
These statements also help you develop a stronger brand that
differentiates you from the competition. Now, let’s look at some
examples.
Mission and Vision Statement Examples For quick reference, here
are 15 examples of mission and vision statements from highly
successful businesses:
Tesla: To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
Nike: Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the
world. *If you have a body, you are an athlete.
MVMT: Style shouldn’t break the bank.
Warbly Parker: To offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price,
while leading the way for socially conscious businesses.
Shopify: Make commerce better for everyone, so businesses can
focus on what they do best: building and selling their products.
Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use
business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental
crisis.
Google: To organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.
Asos: Become the world’s number-one destination for fashion-
loving 20-somethings.Loreal: To provide the best in cosmetics
innovation to women and men around the world with respect for
their diversity.
Bulletproof: Help people perform better, think faster, and live
better.
Honest Tea: Create and promote great-tasting, healthy, organic
beverages.15 Inspiring Mission and Vision Statements Explained
Now you know what they are and how they serve organizations,
let’s take a closer look at these mission and vision statement
examples and draw out the key components.
Universities have been around for a long time as
educational institutions that conduct scientific research,
provide solutions for problems countries face, train
qualified work force in required fields, and play a leading
role in the development of democratic principles and free
thinking. In this sense, universities are considered to be
institutions that lead efforts for social transformation. As
they transform the society, universities themselves are at
the center of change, for they need to be the initiators of
change. The development of the institution of university
throughout history is best told as a narrative of the
emergence of three different structures of university and
their transformation into one another
Mission and vision both relate to an organization’s purpose and are
typically communicated in some written form. Mission and vision are
statements from the organization that answer questions about who we are,
what do we value, and where we’re going. A study by the consulting firm
Bain and Company reports that 90% of the 500 firms surveyed issue some
form of mission and vision statements (Bart & Baetz, 1998). Moreover,
firms with clearly communicated, widely understood, and collectively
shared mission and vision have been shown to perform better than those
without them, with the caveat that they related to effectiveness only when
strategy and goals and objectives were aligned with them as well (Bart, et.
al., 2001).
A mission statement communicates the organization’s reason for
being, and how it aims to serve its key stakeholders. Customers,
employees, and investors are the stakeholders most often
emphasized, but other stakeholders like government or
communities (i.e., in the form of social or environmental impact)
can also be discussed. Mission statements are often longer than
vision statements. Sometimes mission statements also include a
summation of the firm’s values. Values are the beliefs of an
individual or group, and in this case the organization, in which
they are emotionally invested. The Starbucks mission statement
describes six guiding principles that, as you can see, also
communicate the organization’s values:
1.Provide a great work environment and treat each other with
respect and dignity.
2.Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do
business.
3.Apply the highest standards of excellence to the purchasing,
roasting and fresh delivery of our coffee.
4.Develop enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time.
5.Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.
6.Recognize that profitability is essential to our future
success (Starbucks, 2008).
 Mission and vision statements play three critical roles: (1) communicate the purpose of
the organization to stakeholders, (2) inform strategy development, and (3) develop the
measurable goals and objectives by which to gauge the success of the organization’s
strategy. First, mission and vision provide a vehicle for communicating an organization’s
purpose and values to all key stakeholders. Stakeholders are those key parties who have
some influence over the organization or stake in its future. You will learn more about
stakeholders and stakeholder analysis later in this chapter; however, for now, suffice it to
say that some key stakeholders are employees, customers, investors, suppliers, and
institutions such as governments. Typically, these statements would be widely circulated
and discussed often so that their meaning is widely understood, shared, and internalized.
The better employees understand an organization’s purpose, through its
mission and vision, the better able they will be to understand the strategy
and its implementation.
Second, mission and vision create a target for strategy development. That
is, one criterion of a good strategy is how well it helps the firm achieve
its mission and vision. To better understand the relationship among
mission, vision, and strategy, it is sometimes helpful to visualize them
collectively as a funnel. At the broadest part of the funnel, you find the
inputs into the mission statement. Toward the narrower part of the funnel,
you find the vision statement, which has distilled down the mission in a
way that it can guide the development of the strategy. In the narrowest
part of the funnel you find the strategy —it is clear and explicit about
what the firm will do, and not do, to achieve the vision.
mission and vision provide a high-level guide, and the strategy provides a
specific guide, to the goals and objectives showing success or failure of the
strategy and satisfaction of the larger set of objectives stated in the mission.
In the cases of both Starbucks and Toyota, you would expect to see
profitability goals, in addition to metrics on customer and employee
satisfaction, and social and environmental response. Tips for crafting
your vision statement
1.Project five to 10 years in the future.
2.Dream big and focus on success.
3.Use the present tense.
4.Use clear, concise, jargon-free language.
5.Infuse it with passion and make it inspiring.
A mission statement defines what line of business a company is
in, and why it exists or what purpose it serves. Every company
should have a precise statement of purpose that gets people
excited about what the company does and motivates them to
become part of the statement of vision
The first is a statement of vision. It provides a destination for the
organization. Next is a statement of mission. This is a guiding
light of how to get to the destination.
According to Chris Bart, professor of strategy and governance at
McMaster University, a commercial mission statement consists
of three essential components:
•Key market: the target audience.
•Contribution: the product or service.
•Distinction: what makes the product unique or why the audience should buy
it over another.
It's important to understand that vision statements are design-oriented,
while mission statements are execution-oriented. In fact, it is the
corporate vision that should determine its mission. The vision is a bigger
picture and future-oriented, while the mission is more immediately focused
on the present.
How To Write A Vision Statement: 6 Best Practices
•Project five to ten years into the future.
•Determine your purpose and position as an organization.
•Describe what success looks like in your operations.
•Consider your company type and structure.
•Reference your competitors or create an analogy.
•Describe a measurable goal.
once the four components of your vision have been identified,
clarified, and narrowed – customers, their needs, your products
and/or services, and your values, and once you understand the
simple formula, you should be able to write your own .The
statement guides the management team in implementing strategies
that help reinforce the company’s identity and achieve its goals.
It is important for:
•Motivating employees
•Inspiring customers
•Strategic planning
•Setting values
The Rise of a Purpose Statement:
The mission statement, vision, and values are traditionally the
three most common descriptions of a business that explain why a
company exists. In recent years, another type of statement has also
emerged in the business world and is gaining more popularity.
This type of statement is called a purpose statement.
A purpose statement conveys a company’s reason for existence,
just as the mission statement and vision do, but it also shows the
connection between the brand identity and workplace culture of
the company. It combines the components of a mission statement,
vision, and values into a single statement.