Business By Design - What's your Mission ?

The Mission Statement is the “Who”, “What”, and “Why” within your business plan. It’s positioned at the very start and defines your purpose and core principles. Every decision that you make should be within the boundaries of your mission statement. It will briefly cover:

• Who you are? 
• What you do?
• Why you exist?
• Who you exist for?
• What image you want to carry?

The more socially and environmentally conscious you can answer these, the better; but don’t say it if it isn’t a decisive factor.

Reserving time to think about your company provides a chance to define its goals, culture, and primitive standards for decision making. It also allows you to think about “who” your target clients is, “what” benefit they gain from using you, and “why” they will become a repeat customer. This again may help you to determine your principle reason for being.

I bet you want a happy workplace too. You can define that here. And forever make it happen.

My top tips for a good mission statement are as follow:

1. Keep it clear and unambiguous. It’s a statement you’ll review and refine year after year, but nonetheless, you know who you are, and who you will appeal to. Document specifically what that is.

2. Keep it concise. Half a page to a page should cover it. This isn’t the Business Plan after all, merely a scene setting introduction. 

NB: Other than kudos, snappy one-liner mission statements miss the benefits of proper business planning too. Furthermore, businesses who publicise a one-liner mission statement will almost certainly have a far longer statement for internal use. If it's important write it down. But it shouldn’t need explaining (here).

3. Covers the whole of the organisation. This is unlikely to affect (m)any of the company’s I work with, but separate mission statements for individual divisions or products miss the mark. We’re discussing your company culture as a whole.

4. Open Ended and not quantifiable. The mission statement is who we are plus a set of values to abide by. It is the guiding light as to why things are done in a certain way. We’re not looking to set targets.

Access to the mission statement is one of the first documents I'll request when I join a new company. It gives me an immediate awareness of the basic objectives of the company and what constraints we are bound by.

Writing a set of broad-based principles that define you, and which you can refer colleagues to, is surely a great start to any business.