Does Your Mission Command Attention?

And does your vision entice participation and promise an epic journey ahead?

The fabric of company culture is made up of four components: vision, mission, core values and behaviors. If you randomly ask people in your company to articulate any of these four components, you might be surprised by the wildly different answers you get.

This post focuses on the mission and vision statements. I’ll get to core values and behaviors in another post soon.

Mission Statements

The purpose of a mission statement is to define the organization’s purpose. The more clearly and simply articulated the mission, the better. Some example mission statements include:

• Virgin America: “Make flying good again.”

• Zappos: “To deliver excellent customer service.”

• LinkedIn: “To create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce."

Vision Statements

To understand the difference between a mission and a vision statement, let’s look at both from one company: Merck.

Merck’s mission statement: To discover, develop and provide innovative products and services that save and improve lives around the world.

Merck’s vision statement: To make a difference in the lives of people globally through our innovative medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, consumer care and animal health products. We aspire to be the best healthcare company in the world and are dedicated to providing leading innovations and solutions for tomorrow.

Is the difference clear to you, or does one seem like a wordier version of the other?

Like Merck, many companies have both a mission and a vision statement. In many cases, however, I advise clients against articulating a vision statement on their websites. I like a concisely stated mission paired with strong core values to guide employee behavior, but vision statements are more powerful when approached as a compelling narrative.

A compelling narrative is a dynamic work in progress and an opportunity to continually strive as the vision shifts against the backdrop of a rapidly transforming business landscape. The delivery of this living vision replaces the etched-in-stone statement.

Strategically, sticking with a concise mission statement and telling the story of how the vision is achieved affords the organization better story opportunities and greater flexibility. Take, for example, Makerbot, a company that popularized 3D printing, which was acquired by Stratsys in a $400m deal. Makerbot was founded by former educator Bre Pettis.

In January, Bre Pettis grew emotional at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where he shared the message that Makerbot isn’t just about 3D printers. The company’s true aim is to turn everyone into makers and designers. Instead of talking about selling 3D printers, he talked about a kid who needed an artificial arm.

Young amputees, he said, often don't get prosthetics because of cost. They simply grow out of these expensive limbs too quickly. But thanks to 3D printing, Pettis explained, such kids can make their own prosthetics as needed using inexpensive plastic filament.

People will respond to a dynamic narrative vision much more than they ever can to a few platitudes etched on a transparent block or a website. And your customers, employees and collaborators are, after all, people.

Image: Author's Own

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Rita J King is the EVP for Business Development at Science House, a cathedral of the imagination in Manhattan focused on the art and science of doing business. She is a strategist who specializes in the development of collaborative culture by making organizational culture visible so it can be measured and transformed. She is a senior advisor to The Culture Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She makes Mystery Jars, writes about the future for Fast Company and invents story architecture, characters and novel technologies for film and TV as a futurist for the Science and Entertainment Exchange. Follow @RitaJKing on Twitter.