When you think about a company, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s the products they sell, their services, or their impact on their industry. But behind each successful company is a mission.

A mission is a guiding statement that outlines a company’s purpose and values. It comprises three big parts that drive everything the company does. Understanding these key elements can give insight into a company’s heart and what makes it tick. Let’s look at the three big parts of a company’s mission.

Explaining What a Mission Statement Is

A mission statement has three main parts: the organization’s purpose, objectives, and direction. Together, these elements give an overview of what the organization wants to achieve and how it plans to do it.

A good mission statement should express the organization’s core values and beliefs and guide its strategic planning and decision-making. While the basic parts of a mission statement stay the same, the specific wording and focus can change over time as the organization grows and adapts.

This helps the mission statement stay relevant to the organization’s current position and future goals. Many successful companies, such as LinkedIn, PayPal, Google, and Nike, have used their mission statements to give their employees and stakeholders a strong sense of purpose and direction.

The Three Main Pieces of a Mission Statement

What Does Your Business Do?

A mission statement is a short sentence that explains an organization’s purpose, goals, strengths, and direction. It’s an important tool for planning and guiding the organization, and it resonates with employees, customers, and shareholders.

A strong mission statement includes a compelling perspective, values, clarity, emotional appeal, and longevity. Crafting one involves knowing the purpose, defining the audience, clarifying, explaining, choosing the right words, drafting, reviewing, and finalizing.

We also provide examples of strong mission statements from companies like LinkedIn, PayPal, Google, and Nike for your reference.

How Your Business Accomplishes Its Goals

A business achieves success by aligning its actions with its goals. This involves strategic planning, clear communication, and consistent execution of its mission statement.

The company accomplishes its objectives by setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. It assigns responsibilities to employees and regularly evaluates progress.

To ensure its goals are met and its mission is realized, the business conducts regular performance reviews, seeks customer and employee feedback, analyzes the market, and assesses its financial status.

Following these approaches, the business stays focused on its mission and continuously progresses toward its long-term goals.

Why Your Company Does What It Does

Every company has a specific reason for being. It offers products or services to meet a need or solve a customer’s problem. This can be through entertainment, efficiency, or convenience.

Companies innovate, differentiate from competitors, and provide high-quality products to achieve their goals. They invest in research, use unique capabilities, and stay ahead in their industry.

What drives a company includes core values, employee passion, and a commitment to making a positive impact. This can involve sustainability, customer satisfaction, or community development. The company aims to make a meaningful difference in the lives of its customers and the broader community.

The Steps to Crafting Your Mission Statement

Identify Your Purpose

A mission statement is a concise sentence that describes an organization’s purpose, objectives, strengths, and direction. It’s like a roadmap for a company’s future and how it plans to achieve it.

For example, a company might state that it aims to provide high-quality, sustainable products to improve the lives of its customers. This explains what the company does, how it plans to accomplish its goals, and why it does what it does.

This clarity helps guide strategic planning and decision-making within the company and resonates with employees, customers, and shareholders.

When crafting a mission statement, a company should consider its purpose, the intended audience, and the words used to make it compelling.

Speak to Your Audience

A strong mission statement has clear and compelling goals. It guides the organization in staying true to its values and resonating with employees, customers, and shareholders, leading to better decision-making and strategic planning.

The mission statement communicates the company’s strengths, direction, and emotional appeal to its target audience. This creates a sense of longevity and clarity in its purpose. While it may need updates over time, it should remain faithful to the company’s core values and personas.

Make Your Statement Clear and Descriptive

An organization can ensure that its mission statement is clear and descriptive in a few ways:

• Craft it from a compelling perspective, values, and personas.
• Include emotional appeal and consider its longevity.
• This is important for strategic planning and guiding the organization.
• It should resonate with employees, customer service quality, and shareholders.

Some techniques for making a mission statement clear and descriptive are:

• Define the audience.
• Choose the right words.
• Finalize and adopt the statement after drafting and reviewing.

Pick the Perfect Words

Choosing the right words for a mission statement is very important. It helps to communicate the organization’s purpose, values, and direction. The perfect words can make a business stand out from competitors and resonate with employees, customers, and shareholders. They also ensure the mission statement is clear, emotionally appealing, and long-lasting.

By selecting the right words, an organization can create a mission statement that guides strategic planning and reflects the essence of the business. Companies like LinkedIn, PayPal, Google, and Nike have used perfect words in their mission statements to convey their purpose and objectives effectively.

Draft, Review, and Refine

Crafting a strong mission statement involves several steps.

First, a business should understand its purpose, define the audience, and choose the right words. Then, it should review the drafted statement for clarity, emotional appeal, and longevity. Refining the statement involves seeking stakeholder feedback, revising as necessary, and finalizing the language.

Avoiding mistakes such as being overly vague or generic, using jargon or complex language, and failing to align the statement with the organization’s actual practices and culture will help ensure that the mission statement effectively communicates the company’s vision and purpose to internal and external stakeholders. Engaging in this process thoroughly and thoughtfully will also help ensure that the statement effectively communicates the company’s vision and purpose to internal and external stakeholders.

Approve and Put Into Use

A business can ensure its mission statement is clear by choosing words that reflect its purpose, values, and direction. The statement should resonate with employees, customers, and shareholders and be long-lasting.

To use the mission statement, a business should define the audience, clarify the purpose, and choose the right words. Once approved, the business should communicate it to employees and integrate it into strategic planning.

Over time, a business can update its mission statement to adapt to changes. However, changes should be carefully considered to ensure the statement reflects the organization’s purpose and values.

Mission Statement Sample Collection

LinkedIn: Connect Professionals Around the Globe

LinkedIn helps professionals connect worldwide. It’s a platform to create and maintain professional connections, share insights, and seek job opportunities. The goal is to facilitate networking and collaboration among professionals from different industries and locations. This can lead to career growth and business opportunities.

To achieve this, LinkedIn offers personalized job recommendations, industry insights, and professional groups for professionals to engage with like-minded individuals and expand their network.

PayPal: Make Online Payments Easy and Secure

PayPal makes online payments easy and secure. They use encryption technology, secure servers, and fraud detection tools.

The company keeps improving its security measures and authentication processes to achieve its goal.

Their mission statement is key in ensuring online payment security. It provides clarity and purpose, aligns values and objectives, and guides the development of secure online transaction strategies and policies.

The mission statement also reassures employees, customers, and shareholders, showing the company’s dedication to security and trust.

Google: Sort the World’s Info for Everyone

Google’s mission is to make information accessible and useful for everyone. Its search engine organizes web pages, images, and videos and provides relevant search results. Google also develops technologies like natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to enhance the search experience and offer reliable information.

A company’s mission statement can change as it evolves to meet new challenges and market trends. Factors like leadership changes, technological advancements, and customer preferences may prompt a company to revise its mission statement. This helps companies align with their current objectives, including innovation, sustainability, social responsibility, and customer-centric practices.

Nike: Inspire and Innovate for Every Athlete

Nike’s mission is to inspire and innovate for every athlete. They do this by creating high-quality athletic products that cater to diverse athlete needs. Nike continuously pushes the boundaries of innovation to enhance athletic performance with the latest technology and design. This aligns with their core values of inclusivity and empowerment. Catering to athletes of all levels and abilities strengthens Nike’s connection with its customer base and reinforces its position as an industry leader.

Additionally, this approach positively impacts the sports community as a whole.

Tesla: Lead the Charge to Sustainable Energy

Tesla is a leader in sustainable energy.

They make electric vehicles and renewable energy solutions more accessible and affordable.

To achieve this, they invest in research and development to improve battery technology and reduce electric vehicle costs.

Tesla also creates charging stations worldwide to address range anxiety and ease the transition to electric vehicles.

They aim to combat climate change, reduce air pollution, and improve energy efficiency.

This commitment aligns with their core values and vision for a sustainable future.

Top Mistakes to Avoid in Your Mission Statement

Being Unclear: Don’t Confuse People

Mission statements help businesses know their purpose and identity.

A clear mission statement is important for good employee engagement.

A mission statement should be short, specific, and unique to be effective.

It should outline the company’s values, strengths, and objectives.

Avoiding vague or generic language is crucial.

Businesses should aim for clarity, authenticity, and alignment with their overall strategy.

Creating a mission statement with these elements helps businesses convey their purpose and create a strong identity.

Not Being Specific: Avoid Vague Statements

Businesses should avoid vague statements in their mission statement. Instead, they should focus on being specific, clear, and concise. By providing concrete details about their purpose, objectives, and values, organizations can create a mission statement that is meaningful and actionable.

Being specific in the mission statement is important because it helps to guide strategic planning, attract and retain employees, and communicate the organization’s values to stakeholders. Without specificity, a mission statement may lack direction and fail to inspire or provide a clear sense of purpose.

Common pitfalls to avoid when crafting a mission statement include using vague or generic language, being too broad in scope, and not considering the target audience. By being mindful of these potential pitfalls, businesses can create a mission statement that is strong, impactful, and aligned with their organizational goals.

No Uniqueness: Your Brand Should Stand Out

A mission statement briefly explains an organization’s purpose, objectives, strengths, and direction. It is a helpful tool for strategic planning and guiding the organization.

A strong mission statement includes a compelling perspective, values, clarity, emotional appeal, and longevity. Crafting one involves knowing the purpose, defining the audience, clarifying, explaining, describing, choosing the right words, drafting, reviewing, and finalizing and adopting.

The blog also gives examples of strong mission statements from companies such as LinkedIn, PayPal, Google, and Nike.

Not Updating: Keep It Current

Not updating a mission statement can cause problems. It might not match the organization’s current goals and values, leading to confusion and a lack of direction for employees and stakeholders.

A business should regularly review its mission statement to ensure it is current and accurately reflects its purpose, objectives, and direction.

Updating the mission statement involves:

• Evaluating it in light of current goals and values
• Considering changes in the competitive landscape, market trends, and customer needs

A mission statement should be flexible and able to change over time. Factors to consider when making updates include the organization’s growth, changes in leadership, market conditions, stakeholder expectations, and advances in technology and innovation.

By keeping the mission statement current, a business can guide its strategic planning, engage employees, and communicate its purpose and values to stakeholders.

Questions People Ask About Mission Statements

What’s in a Mission Statement?

A mission statement has three main parts: the organization’s purpose, objectives, and direction.

The purpose explains why the organization exists, its objectives describe its goals, and the direction states where it is headed.

For instance, a nonprofit organization’s mission statement may highlight its commitment to serving the community, its goal of making a positive impact, and its vision of a better future.

In this way, a mission statement guides the organization’s decisions and actions, providing a roadmap for its operations.

While a mission can adapt to changes, it stays focused on its core purpose, objectives, and direction.

Can Your Mission Change Over Time?

A company can determine if its mission has changed by evaluating its current mission statement. They can check if it accurately reflects the organization’s purpose, objectives, and direction. Additionally, they should see if it resonates with employees, customers, and shareholders.

Shifts in the market, leadership changes, organizational growth or restructuring, and evolving customer needs and expectations may contribute to a change in a company’s mission.

A company should regularly review and update its mission statement to keep it relevant and practical. This ensures alignment with the organization’s goals, values, and strengths. It’s essential to involve key stakeholders in the review process and communicate the mission to employees, customers, and shareholders.

Additionally, the company should monitor industry trends and seek feedback from employees and customers. They can also incorporate new strategic initiatives to maintain the mission’s relevance.