Define Your Mission, Vision, and Values

In order to achieve your goals, first you need to define them.

In Traction, Wickman refers to this concept as “core values.” In the book The 8th Habit, Sephen Covey refers to this as “voice”; while Jim Collins calls it “the hedgehog concept” in his book Good to Great.

Whatever you call it, defining your Mission, Vision, and Values – or MVV - is the first step on the road to becoming an Integrated Business.

Once a company knows where it wants to be, it can decide how it is going to get there. A company should know what financial targets it wants to hit, what impact it wants to have on society and the community, and how it plans to help its employees succeed.

It’s important to note that, while Mission, Vision, and Values inform one another, they are each different concepts that need to be defined by the leadership team.

A mission statement is a single sentence that explains why your company exists. Some good questions to ask yourself when creating your mission statement are:

“Why is this company here?”

“What is important to this company?”

A mission statement should be Hemingway-esque in its combination of brevity and how compelling it is. Keep it short, simple, and interesting. Avoid flowery prose or legalese while crafting the sentence. It should be clear to every person who reads it.

Tesla’s mission statement, for example, is “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

That is both straight to the point and compelling.

⁠

If your company’s mission statement answers the “why?” question, then its vision statement answers the “how?” The vision statement goes into more detail about how your company will accomplish its mission.

For example, Amazon’s vision statement is: "Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online."

⁠

While your mission statement answers “why?” and your vision statement answers “how?”, a company’s value statement might be considered to answer the important “who?” question. The value statement lays out the core values that a company abides by and that it expects its management and employees to abide by.

When your core values are laid out properly, you’ll find that your company attracts like-minded individuals to the organization. It also helps to weed out anyone that isn’t a good fit. Once you’ve created a well-defined vision statement and laid out your core values, the company must hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize people based on those values, according to Wickman.

The proper combination of mission, vision, and value helps create a strong company culture that is easy for the right people to slide into while holding the wrong type of person at bay.

⁠

Defining your MVV isn’t necessarily a simple task. It takes insight and thoughtful consideration to really know what you want your company to become. Below, we’ve provided a questionnaire that many of our other business owners have found useful when creating their own MVV.

⁠

MVV Questionnaire Example⁠

⁠

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.