Every business should define its overall fundamental purpose. Set up a way of thinking and values at its core which concisely explains what you do and why. In this text, we are going to look at what a mission statement is, why it’s so important, and how to compose a great one for your business.

There is only so much you can say about how to write a mission statement as in essence it is pretty straight forward, so we have tried to jam-pack this article with examples which we hope can inspire you. And, for the record, here is ours:

“It’s our mission to help small businesses grow through efficient delegation, to skilled virtual assistants.” bizee.co

Right, no time to waste, here’s what’s included:

What exactly is a Mission Statement?

Why are Mission Statements Important?

What to Include in Your Mission Statement (and what to avoid)

Mission Statement vs Vision Statement (with examples)

How Long Should a Mission Statement Be?

How to Write a Mission Statement

What Exactly is a Mission Statement?

The word reference defines a mission statement as a formal summary of the aims and values of a company, organization, or individual, eg. a mission statement to which all employees can subscribe. 

A mission statement is not the same as a vision statement. A vision statement imagines the ideal condition of your organization, clients, or the world, in an attempt to inspire a sense of greater purpose, while your mission statement clarifies the system and strategy you are using to get there in order to motivate action…. btu more on this later.

Mission Statement Examples

To give you a better thought of precisely what mission statements include, here are some mission statement models from leading organizations:

Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Tesla: To accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.

Starbucks: To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighbourhood at a time.

IKEA: To create a better everyday life for the many people.

Nordstrom: To give customers the most compelling shopping experience possible.

American Express: We work hard every day to make American Express the world's most respected service brand.

Honest Tea: To create and promote great-tasting, healthy, organic beverages.

Invisible Children: To end violence and exploitation facing our world's most isolated and vulnerable communities.

Prezi: To reinvent how people share knowledge, tell stories, and inspire their audiences to act.

sweetgreen: To inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food.

Why are Mission Statements Important?

A company mission statement is a beginning - addressing the inquiry, “Why does my business exist?”. It serves as a foundation for your prosperity. 

A mission statement is not only important for your clients — it is similarly important to your workers as well. In essence a mission statement can be the establishment of everything your business does.

Remember that some people will look at your mission statement when they're concluding whether to work with you. So whether it's a likely client, imminent worker, or a possible investor, you will need to have a well-written mission statement that attracts them.

What to Include in Your Mission Statement (and what to avoid).

Keep in mind it’s all about purpose and getting across the message of what you do and why. A really great mission statement can include:

• WHAT YOU DO.

• HOW YOU DO IT.

• WHY YOU DO IT.

A mission statement should be centred around the present time and place, not expressing where you need to be in the future (save that for your vision statement). Mistaking mission for vision is one of the most well-known mistakes companies make in their mission statement. Examples :

• Microsoft's main goal is to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more”. 

Well, this is more an aspiration than an announcement of why the business exists and what it does.

• Facebook's main goal is to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” which again is more of a vision statement. 

Another basic mistake is composing a mission statement that doesn’t say anything important about what the company does.

Don’t forget your purpose and avoid boring cliches. Stay away from essentially posting what your company does and shift your focus to the bigger picture: what directs your company strategy and inspires your workforce. The use of buzzwords and jargon in a mission statement is a common misstep companies make when crafting mission statements.

Mission Statement vs Vision Statement (with examples)

The vision statement centres around tomorrow and what the organization needs to turn into. The mission statement centres around today and what the organization does.

Mission statement questions:

• What do you do?

• Who are your customers?

• What is the nature of your product or service?

Vision statement questions :

• What problem does my company seek to solve?

• What is my dream for this company?

• Are there changes I believe my company can make?

Examples of vision and mission statements 

Company: Amazon

Mission: We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience.

Vision: To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

Company: Google

Mission: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Vision: To provide access to the world’s information in one click.

Company: Uber

Mission: Uber’s mission is to bring transportation — for everyone, everywhere.

Vision: Smarter transportation with fewer cars and greater access. Transportation that’s safer, cheaper, and more reliable; transportation that creates more job opportunities and higher incomes for drivers.

Company: LinkedIn

Mission: To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.

Vision: To create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.

Company: AirBnB

Mission: Belong anywhere.

Vision: Tapping into the universal human yearning to belong—the desire to feel welcomed, respected, and appreciated for who you are, no matter where you might be.

Company: GoDaddy

Mission: We are here to help our customers kick ass. We do that by living our strategy and ruthlessly prioritizing our work to create simple elegant technology that delights our customers – all while delivering service that is second to none. Every single day, we join forces across teams and groups to break down barriers, build new markets, and stare down the impossible until the impossible blinks.

Vision: We will radically shift the global economy toward small business by empowering people to easily start, confidently grow, and successfully run their own ventures.

How Long Should a Mission Statement Be?

The normal length of a mission statement is 29 words, yet there is no right answer. As a general rule of thumb, keep your mission statement in the range of two and four sentences and under 100 words max. 

How to Write a Mission Statement

A right pre-cursor for composing your own is to consider other companies' mission statements. At that point, you should ask and answer some key questions to characterize the major purpose of your brand, business, and goals.

Here are some important questions to ask and answer:

• Why are you in business?

Think about how what you do will improve your company, your representatives, and your clients now and in the future. Here's a model from The Humane Society:

“Celebrating Animals, Confronting Cruelty”. Concise, and only four words

• Who are your customers?

Consider your main audience and what you want them to take away from your company.

• USP - What makes you different than your competitors?

One of the most basic things you have to consider as you develop your business is how to make your business stand out from the crowd. Is it a value point, level of service, a better product - what is your unique selling point?

• What is your brand's public image?

Characterizing your brand means thinking about its impact on the rest of the world.

• Where do you do business?

Is your business locally arranged, regional, or around the world? Characterizing where you will provide your products or service can help you with building up your marketing and sales strategy.

• Why determine your leadership philosophy?

A strong leadership philosophy is vital to successfully running a team, organization, or business. When your leadership style is established in a strong set of qualities and standards, you’ll stay focused on your goals, and you’ll be more likely to motivate and inspire your employees on a regular basis.

Composing a mission statement is a key step when developing your business strategy. Think about why you're ready to go, who you serve, what you sell, and what makes your company stand out from the competition. Ask how your representatives fit in and what value you provide to them, your customers, and your community. 

Best Mission Statements with explanation

Since we've analyzed what a mission statement is and how to make one, we can address the key question what does a good mission statement look like, and who’s doing it right? 

• Patagonia

“Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

Patagonia's mission statement spreads out precisely what it does and what the public can expect from it. While the association may attract criticism when it makes a political statement, its mission statement makes no secret of what it stands for.

Patagonia’s actions and values have an immediate relationship to its main goal. Patagonia is very known for environmental protection and taking a stand to fight climate change, and it backs this up by donating 1% of its sales to grassroots environmental groups and engineering its stores and items to leave a minimal footprint.

• Tesla

“To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

Tesla centres on upgrading the utilization of sustainable energy throughout the globe, so it’s no surprise that their mission statement reflects this. 

• Spotify

“To unlock the potential of human creativity—by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.”

Spotify’s mission begins esoteric -unlocking the potential of human creativity is a lofty goal—but takes an amazingly explicit and guided turn.

•  Sweetgreen

“To inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food”

Health-food supplier Sweetgreen burrows further than merely relating what it does and connects its mission to how it sources and gets ready meals while working to improve the communities in which its restaurants are located. Sweetgreen has also partnered with the ASPCA to improve animal welfare—they’ve definitely gone all-in on its “real food” vow.

By doing this, Sweetgreen is characterizing their why and intently tying its main goal both to its values and to those of its audience.

• Nike

“To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world”

Nike’s mission both tells the story of what the brand does and sets the bar for future corporate techniques. 

The organization further clarifies, "Our central goal is the thing that drives us to do all that conceivable to extend human potential. We do that by making momentous game developments, by making our items all the more economically, by building an imaginative and differing worldwide group and by having a beneficial outcome in networks where we live and work."

• Etsy

“Keep commerce human.”

Etsy unites simplicity with its purpose to construct a statement that can guide the brand’s strategy while appealing to its customers. The announcement, as Etsy puts it, does double-duty: “It guides our day-to-day decisions while inspiring us to think big for the long term.”

Etsy is setting up the apparent issue- that the business world can be indifferent and frightening so that it can solve it by making it approachable.

• Framebridge

“To make it easy for you to tell your story by framing the things you love.”

Framebridge defines its main goal by talking straightforwardly to its audience (and making us feel special in the process). It addresses a problem its clients have (outlining things) and understands for it. 

This is another case of a statement that’s simple and defines what the brand does, but its personal approach is particularly convincing. By outlining the statement in the second person, Framebridge gives anyone reading their mission the potential to see themselves as a customer.

• Apple

“Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.”

Apple's mentioning to us what it does and what it's accomplished, but this statement leaves little space for aspiration. Compared with the company’s past statement :

“To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind”-as it is currently, this mission peruses more like a fact sheet than something that could be used to guide corporate strategy or inspire anyone.

• Disney

“To be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services, and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative, and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world.”

Given how Disney has broadly organized its immersive experiences and putting the client first, this mission statement certainly could use some help.

While it doesn't totally miss the mark—attempting to be “one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information” is ambitious and aspirational—this lacks the personality and fun the brand is known for.

• Target

“Our mission is to make Target your preferred shopping destination in all channels by delivering outstanding value, continuous innovation, and exceptional guest experiences by consistently fulfilling our Expect More. Pay Less. brand promise.”

Target works a good job here of addressing the customer directly but falls short on inspiration as it devolves into a laundry list of corporate goals.

A mission statement should be ready to have the choice to face the trial of your time and boast a brand’s sense of purpose, something which will easily be degraded by using jargon. Having a brand guarantee is something to be thankful and should relate to the mission, but both elements should be able to stand on their own.

It’s your turn to write a mission statement

Ready to get started? 

Write a mission statement with a goal that’s an action, not a conclusion. Make it inspiring.

When you have a composed mission statement, start using it! Frame it and put a duplicate in your home or office so you see it regularly. You need to surround yourself with your own inspirational attitude. You want people to know you’re going to live up to what you wrote, so spread the word.

Author: Thomas Smallwood is an outsourcing specialist. Having worked in companies around Europe, from the support desk to the boardroom, he founded bizee.co to help small businesses grow through efficient delegation to skilled virtual assistants. He is an award-winning blogger and a passionate advocate for mental health awareness.

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn.