Mission & Vision Statement: Simple Steps, Examples & Templates

People are drawn to personalities, not faceless brands. When you think of great companies, you probably imagine Apple and Nike. However, behind the brand is a mission you connect with on an emotional level. A mission statement humanizes a brand and makes it attractive to investors, potential employees, and customers.

Your mission and vision statement is the driving force of your organization. It’s the foundation that shapes and influences everything you do, from internal communications to marketing. It’s why your employees show up in the morning.

A vision statement acts as a north star for your organization. It’s a lofty, audacious statement that defines what you stand for and the reason you exist. 

In the famous words of Simon Sinek, “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” Likewise, a mission statement instills a passion for your company’s purpose in employees, leading to increased performance and profitability.

In this guide, we’ll explain how to write the perfect mission statement and share some of the best examples we’ve seen.

What is a business mission statement?

A business mission statement is a concise and memorable way to communicate your business goals to clients, employees, and stakeholders. Mission statements are usually within a paragraph or sentence length. 

Yours answers:

• What your company does for employees
• What your company does for customers
• What your company does for the owners and stakeholders

Include your mission statement as part of a business plan under the executive summary. You could also post your mission statement on your company website for external and internal stakeholders to read.

What is a non-profit mission statement?

A non-profit mission statement communicates your nonprofit’s fundamental purposes. It’s a brief explanation of:

• Why you exist
• Who you serve
• How you serve them

It’s important to note that a mission and vision statement are not the same. The vision statement describes the goals you want to achieve in the future, while the mission statement explains how you plan to achieve the vision.

What are the benefits of mission and vision statements? 

Provides direction

A mission statement gives your organization a focus target. It provides a strong sense of direction that influences decisions, strategies, and future plans. Everything you do aligns with your overarching goals. As a result, you’re focused on the bigger picture instead of getting caught up in short-term business performance.

Measures success  

A mission statement is the main criterion you use to measure business progress. You know you’re succeeding when your product, services, and actions align with your mission.

Aids recruitment  

When a potential employee is trying to learn about your company, they navigate to the about us section of your organization’s website. The mission statement tells them about your culture, values, and beliefs. Candidates are more likely to gravitate towards your organization when they see your team living your company mission. 

A Gallup research of nearly 50,000 businesses showed that mission-driven leadership encourages employees to:

• View their organizational contributions more broadly
• Have higher productivity
• Stay with their current employer
• Be proactive in creating a safe workplace
• Build connections with customers

Unifies teams

Your organization’s purpose Is essential to employees. A Deloitte survey revealed much higher levels of employee engagement (73%) in a purpose-driven company. A mission statement keeps your employees united, committed, and driven towards a common goal.

Ensures accountability

A public mission statement keeps you accountable for the goals you’ve set out to achieve. Your customers know the claims you’ve made, and they hold you to that standard. The same applies to your in-house teams and partners who feel encouraged to strive for the company goals in all they do. 

Improves internal branding

Internal branding is the process of communicating your mission and vision to your employees. It helps employees understand how they fit into your company’s long-term goals. In addition, employees develop an emotional connection to your company when you have a strong internal brand.

A few ways to improve internal branding include:

• Defining your company mission
• Explaining your core values
• Featuring your core values and mission statement on your company website
• Include internal branding as part of the employee onboarding process to personalize the employee experience from day one
• Using your company’s knowledgebase software  to share updates to your branding
• Publicly recognizing employees who live the company mission
• Making internal branding a priority

8 tips for writing a company mission statement

1. Ask questions

For this step, gather the founders and stakeholders in a room. You may include your business coach or top managers in this session. Your goal is to establish a clear purpose of your mission statement by answering the following questions:

• What do we do?
• Why does it matter?
• Who is our target audience?
• What are our main strengths?
• How does our product or service make a difference?
• What are the most ambitious goals we want to achieve?
• What impact do we want to have on our community and the world at large?

Schedule a meeting or two to answer these questions in detail; review mission statements from other organizations to draw inspiration. 

2. Identify themes from your interviews   

Next, you’ll want to answer these questions:

• What is our key differentiator?
• From what we’ve reviewed, which mission statements resonate with us?
• Which descriptions feel right?
• What common themes emerged?

From the answers, you’ll notice several words, sentences, or phrases that keep coming up. As you develop ideas from these themes, remember the following:

• While your mission statement is lofty and audacious, it should also be attainable. 
• Your mission statement should be clear enough for anyone to understand.
• It should inspire management and employees to live the core values.
• It should encourage buy-in from stakeholders.

3. Create the first draft

Invite employees from public relations, marketing, and the content department to participate in the writing process. 

Use the recurring words or themes from the answers to form the base of the mission statement. Then, ask everyone involved to say what comes to mind based on the theme. Some will sound great; others not so much—but that’s okay!

Write down as many ideas as possible without editing or rewording the ideas. Then, use the ideas you’ve gathered to write a few drafts. 

Remember those mission statements from other companies you liked? Take a second look at the structure of their mission statement to see how you can replicate it in yours.

Pro tip: Looking for a way to save time? Use the mission statement templates we’ve provided in this article to speed up the process.

4. Keep it short

A long mission statement is hard to remember. If nobody remembers the mission statement, then it has no impact. Limit sentences to 10-20 words. Avoid words longer than four syllables or 12 letters. Don’t use more than a one-word string (A, B, and C).

5. Ask for feedback

A mission statement that inspires you isn’t necessarily going to inspire others. Hence, asking for feedback ensures that everyone understands your message. 

Get feedback from employees, customers, and even board members. Questions you want to answer in the feedback include:

• How does the mission statement make you feel?
• What part of the mission statement doesn’t work for you?
• What would you change?
• Is it missing something?

6. Finalize and share

Use the feedback to improve the mission statement. Once you’ve arrived at the final version, update all company materials to reflect the new mission statement. When sharing your mission statement, remember you have two audiences:

1. Your customers and partners
2. Your employees

7. Employee-facing documents

Living your mission starts with the onboarding process. First, include your mission in the employee handbook and onboarding documents. Next, add the mission statement to your careers page, workplace posters, paycheck stubs, offer letters, and internal communications platform.

Asana’s CEO, Justin Rosenstein, has an interesting process for reinforcing the company’s mission to employees. First, he walks up to an employee and asks what they’re working on. The answer is usually related to a current project. Again, he asks why they’re working on the project, and when they respond, he asks why again. He follows this chain until the answer leads to the company’s mission statement.

At Guru, we use a reward-based system to encourage employees to live the company’s values. We ask employees to nominate colleagues who exemplify the company’s values. CEO Rick Nucci reads out these names during company calls and shares stories of employees who are great examples of value in action.

If you’re using Guru as your internal communication tool, you can share updates to your company mission using announcements. These ensure that everyone in the organization sees it and you can see who read critical information.

8. Customer-facing documents

A few ways to share your mission statement on external-facing documents include:

• Product brochures
• Business cards
• Extranet software with partners and vendors
• Company website
• Company vehicle
• Press releases

Mistakes to avoid when writing a mission statement

✅Jargon and buzzwords

When it comes to writing a mission statement, the best way to have an impact is to make it unique and powerful. Every organization wants to be a leader, but using the term in your mission statement is simply too common and tends to fall flat. 

Here are the most common buzzwords and jargon to avoid:

• The best possible
• World-class
• Maximize investor returns
• Superior customer service
• Outcome focused
• Professionally competent
• Quality assured
• Efficient and effective
• Leader/leading
• Highly valued

‍
✅Replacing a mission statement with a tagline

Some readers may confuse a tagline with a mission statement. A tagline is usually a few words that describe your organization, but it doesn’t replace your mission statement.

Examples include:

Nike - Just do it

Wendy’s – Where’s the beef?

Coca-Cola – Open Happiness

L’Oréal – Because you’re worth it

You can’t tell much about an organization by reading the tagline, but your mission statement clarifies what makes your company unique.

✅Lacking personality and reading like a fact sheet

Factsheets are great for information. But nobody ever read a factsheet and came away feeling inspired to do more. So, avoid being passive or descriptive with your mission statement. Instead, think of the bigger picture of what guides your company strategy and motivates your employees.

Don’t take yourself too seriously or give in to the trap to sound serious and professional. The best mission statement is infused with humanity and reflects your company’s personality.

The 7 most inspiring mission and vision statement examples for business

1. Guru

When Rick Nucci and Mitch Stewart built Guru, they had one goal in mind: To create a product that gives people the knowledge they needed to do their jobs right inside the tools they already work with. The mission statement perfectly encapsulates the overarching goal of Guru which is to make knowledge easily accessible. We are also guided by these core values listed on our about us page.

2. American Express

There are several core values that American Express promotes in its mission and vision statement: 

• American Express is building a respected service brand that prioritizes customer services and offers unique products and services
• There’s an emphasis on teamwork, so employees are in the best position to help customers

3. Spotify

Spotify is giving all musicians a platform to release their music and get paid simultaneously. In addition, they’re removing the constraints of traditional record labels and providing artists with direct access to their fans through Spotify’s global presence.

4. Tesla 

If you love green energy and care about the environment, then Tesla’s mission and vision statement will resonate with you. Tesla’s goal is perhaps one of the most ambitious you’ll see in this list. They wanted to revolutionize the automobile industry through electric vehicles that are safe to drive without sacrificing performance.

And they’ve done it! Tesla attained its first full year of profit in 2020 and delivered nearly 500,000 electric cars to customers. They’re currently worth over $500 billion, which is more than the nine largest automobile companies combined. 

But it’s not just about money. Tesla identified a real problem and built an entire company to reduce air pollution. 

Where competitors were adamant that fuel-based cars were the only way to guarantee performance, Tesla transitioned the transport sector from polluted engines to eco-friendly energy sources. Everything they’ve achieved goes back to their corporate vision to drive the world’s transition to electric vehicles.

5. Nike

If you’ve watched a Nike commercial, then you’ve seen them living their mission. For Nike, an athlete isn’t just a professional with a sports career. It’s the teenager in the Middle East playing soccer while wearing her hijab. It’s the young, Black kid who loves basketball and dreams of going pro one day. 

Nike believes everyone is an athlete. They promote individualism and inclusion through sports. You don’t need a six-pack or a young body to be an athlete. With the right motivation, anyone can do it.

Interestingly, there’s no mention of apparel or sneakers in their mission statement. It’s clever because it doesn’t limit Nike. Instead, it allows them to expand and evolve with consumer needs.

A few ways that Nike achieves their mission include:

• Designing the Vaporfly Next% shoes helped Kenya runner Eliud Kipchoge become the first human to run 26.2 miles under 2 hours. It remains one of the greatest achievements in sports.
• Fostering an environment where inclusion, respect, and empowerment are practiced daily. For example, Nike recruited several LGBT and Black sports icons to lead the 2020 equality campaign. Famous names include Megan Rapinoe, Serena Williams, and LeBron James.
• Giving back to communities by investing over $81 million in the Made to Play program. As a result, over 100,000 coaches and 15 million kids have benefited from the program.

6. Microsoft

The mission and vision statements show that Microsoft focuses on empowering people and organizations to reach their full potential.

The first component is empowering customers. We see this in the affordable products Microsoft makes to help students unlock their learning potentials with software like OneDrive and Microsoft Office.

The second component is empowering customers. Again, we see this in Microsoft products such as Microsoft 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft Azure.

The third component, “on the planet,” shows that Microsoft is a global brand, and everyone who comes in contact with a product can benefit. They live their company mission by fostering an innovative culture that encourages employees and customers to reach their full potential.

7. Asana

According to Asana, the first half of the statement “help humanity thrive” is the mission statement, and the second half, “enabling the world’s teams,” is the vision statement.

The goal of enabling the world’s teams is what drives company goals and product development at Asana. They’ve cracked the code on helping teams of any size manage projects and workflows through user-friendly applications.

Asana is one of the best examples of living a company’s mission. They treat culture as a product, and they’re committed to empowering their employees to thrive. Asana values teamwork, co-creation, and doing things fast. 

Through a distributed workflow where each employee focuses on their core expertise, everyone has the right structure to reach their personal and professional goals.

Mission statement examples for nonprofits

Alzheimer’s Association

There are several elements here to unpack:

• Accelerate global research
• Drive risk reduction and early detection
• Maximize quality care and support
• Find a cure for Alzheimer’s

The Alzheimer’s Association achieves its mission in the following ways:

• All care and support services are focused on providing timely and accurate diagnoses as well as increasing the quality of care for people living with Alzheimer’s
• Collaborate with community-based providers, volunteers, and health systems to increase access to diagnosis and quality care

The Women’s Center

The Women’s Center’s mission statement is comprehensive and direct. They clearly state their desired impact on improving the mental health and well-being of all members. They also show the how through education, counseling, and support.

The Women’s Center achieves its mission and vision in the following ways:

• Therapy and support groups
• Legal and financial advising
• Domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy
• Family, individual, couple, and adolescent counseling
• Awareness, advocacy, and community programs
• Teaching institution for mental health professionals

American Red Cross

The mission statement of the American Red Cross is easy to understand. They aim to alleviate human suffering during emergencies through the support of donors and volunteers.

A few ways the Red Cross achieves its mission include:

• Community of volunteers are ready and prepared to act in an emergency
• People affected by disasters access lifesaving blood products, shelter, and care
• Prioritizes the most urgent cases of distress without regard for race, nationality, or religious beliefs

The Trevor Project

A few ways the Trevor Project achieves its mission include:

• Free and confidential suicide prevention support via chat, phone lifeline, and text
• TrevorSpace, a safe social networking site for LGBTQ youth
• Trevor Research, a program that brings new knowledge and clinical implications to the field of suicidology
• Trevor Advocacy to support policy change at state and federal levels. The goal is to improve the mental health and well-being of young LGTBQ young people through interventions that address the risk factors for suicide.

Streamline your mission and vision statement templates with Guru 

A mission drives the most successful organizations. It’s how your employees and customers know what you believe in or stand for. 

Whether you’re writing your first draft or updating your mission statement, our mission and vision templates give you an easy format to simplify the process.

Make your templates accessible for everyone by storing and managing them on Guru. In addition, you can download a range of mission, vision, and business templates and customize them to fit your organization’s needs.

Frequently asked questions about mission and vision statement

What if my mission statement changes? 

As your organization grows, your objectives and mission can (and should) change. Think of all the places you shared your old statement, from internal resources to external-facing documents. If you’ve documented the placement, it’s easy to make changes at once. Start with a press release to promote your updated mission. Next, send an email to your customer base and stakeholders informing them of the updated mission. Finally, use Guru to share new changes with your employees and partners.

What is the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement?

A mission statement defines the goals of your organization and how you plan to reach those objectives. The vision statement is where you hope to be in the future.

What are the three parts of a mission statement?

The three parts of a mission statement are:

• Your target audience
• Your product or service
• The distinctive quality that sets you apart from competitors