Mission, vision and values: how to write them so they steer decisions

Most companies keep their mission, vision and values on the website or in the staff handbook. Few employees can tell you what they say, and fewer still have changed a decision because of them. The usual cause is the text itself. Customer focus, reliability, quality at a fair price: words like these fit every competitor, so they help nobody choose.

Written well, mission, vision and values set the frame for your strategy: which markets you study, which options you take seriously and which you drop without a long debate. They also let people decide without asking the owner. Whether they do depends less on the wording than on how they are made and used.

What is the difference between mission, vision and values?

Each term answers a different question and lasts a different length of time. The table follows a fictitious packaging printer with 25 staff that prints short runs of boxes and labels for small food and drink brands.

Fictitious Firmfocus example.

Jim Collins and Jerry Porras split this into two parts. The core ideology, core purpose plus core values, should hardly change. The envisioned future, a bold long-range goal with a vivid picture of reaching it, is meant to stretch the organisation. Their advice: preserve the core and stimulate progress, so strategies and practices change while the core stays. They call the long-range goal a BHAG, short for big, hairy, audacious goal.

What does research say about mission statements?

Mission statements have been studied for decades, mostly in large organisations, with modest findings that point the same way.

• Selective links: Christopher Bart and Mark Baetz studied 136 large Canadian organisations and found that mission statements, and some of their specific characteristics, were selectively associated with higher performance (source: Journal of Management Studies, November 1998).
• A small effect on average: a meta-analysis by Sebastian Desmidt and colleagues combined two decades of studies and found a small positive relation with financial performance, varying with how performance was measured (source: Management Decision, March 2011).
• The process decides: a review by Susanne Braun and colleagues concluded that the long-term effect depends on why the statement was created, how it was developed and implemented, its content and format, and the attitudes of the people who use it (source: Journal of Management and Organization, July 2012).

The lesson: a mission statement helps a little on average, mainly when it is developed with the people who must use it and then used in decisions. None of these studies suggests that a better sentence on its own improves results. Spend your time on the conversation and on applying the outcome, not on polishing words.

How to write a mission statement that steers choices

1. 01

   Start with why you exist

   Keep asking "why does that matter?" until you reach the reason customers need you. "We print boxes" becomes "we help small brands look as good on the shelf as the big ones".

2. 02

   Say who it is for, and who it is not for

   Name the customer group in concrete terms: sector, size, region or life stage. A mission that includes everyone excludes no decision.

3. 03

   Make the difference visible

   Describe the mechanism that sets you apart: one contact person from design check to delivery, delivery within a week, an in-house design team. Quality is not a mechanism, because every competitor claims it.

4. 04

   Test it against a real decision

   Take a hard decision from the past year, such as a large order at a thin margin. Would the mission have made the answer clearer? If not, it is still too vague.

Fictitious Firmfocus example.

How to write a vision statement you can check

A vision describes the future you are working towards, usually five to ten years out, and the more concrete it is, the more useful. "To be the preferred packaging partner" is a wish nobody can check. "Within five years, independent brands in our region call us first for any run under 10,000 units, and four out of five reorders come in online" describes a future you can test every year. When the market or your ambition changes, revise the vision and keep the purpose.

Core values that guide behaviour

Values earn their place when they sometimes cost something. Would you keep this value if it lost you a customer or a month's revenue? If you would drop it the moment it hurts, it is a slogan.

Patrick Lencioni made the point with a list of respectable values, integrity and respect among them, from the annual report of Enron. He separates four kinds, and mixing them up keeps value lists empty:

• Core values: deep principles that guide every action and that you will not trade for short-term gain.
• Aspirational values: qualities you need for the future but do not have yet; label them honestly.
• Permission-to-play values: minimum standards such as honesty that every employee must meet. They do not set you apart.
• Accidental values: habits that grew without anyone choosing them.

Keep a handful of core values, each with behaviour that fits and behaviour that does not.

Fictitious Firmfocus example.

In larger organisations, values are part of governance. The UK Corporate Governance Code, for example, asks the board to establish the company's purpose, values and strategy and to satisfy itself that these and the culture are aligned. The code is written for listed companies, but the principle travels: approve the values, then check whether daily behaviour matches them.

Small business vs larger organisation

Test your mission and vision

• Distinctive: could a direct competitor publish the same text?
• Exclusive: does it name something you deliberately do not do?
• Recognisable: would an employee recognise their own work in it?
• Usable: does it help with a real decision you face this quarter?
• Memorable: can someone retell it in their own words after one reading?

Common pitfalls

• Ten values instead of four: a long list means nothing has been chosen.
• Written for the website: text drafted without the people who apply it rarely survives a hard decision.
• A vision that is only a revenue target: a number says how big you want to be, not what you will be known for.
• Never revisited: a first draft is fine, but sharpen it after the SWOT analysis.

The choices inside this frame go into a one-page strategic plan. Read what good strategy is for the difference between choices and ambitions, and strategy for small businesses for the practice in a small firm. This article is part of Put your strategy in writing in the Strategy theme.