Strategy Gap Finder: Mission and Vision
Find out whether your statement is a mission, a vision, or a professional objective, and what it still needs.
Draft: this page is a work in progress, and its questions, numbers, and wording may change.
Why I Built This: Which One Did You Write?
Mission and vision statements get mixed up more than any other planning document I see. A team writes a vision, and it describes what the company does today. A team writes a mission, and it describes a future it hopes to reach. Both end up on a wall, and neither does its job. The same thing happens with the professional objective at the top of a resume, which I wrote about in Professional Objectives: Do you have a Mission? What about a Vision?. This page checks your statement against the definition it claims to meet and tells you which one you actually wrote.
How It Works
Pick what you are checking: a mission, a vision, or a professional objective. Type your statement, or start from one of the examples. Then answer the questions. Each question shows where its rule comes from, so you can see the page is not inventing a standard. Unlike the other paths, this one does not suggest answers, because whether a sentence captures your business or your values is something only you can judge.
If your vision only describes what you do today, the page tells you it reads as a mission. If your mission only describes a future you want, it tells you it reads as a vision.
The Definitions It Uses
- Mission: Bain defines a mission statement as "a definition of the company's business, who it serves, what it does, its objectives, and its approach to reaching those objectives."
- Vision: Bain defines a vision statement as "a description of the desired future state of the company," and adds that "an effective vision inspires the team, showing them how success will look and feel."
- Professional objective: From my article, a professional objective states your why, names one or more core values, is honest rather than bland, answers the question a reader never asks out loud (why you, out of everyone else), and holds as a single statement.
The page also shows Bain's advice for leaders developing these statements: make the objectives measurable, the approach actionable, and the vision achievable; communicate in clear, simple, and precise language; and build buy-in and support throughout the organization.
Where the Rules Come From
The mission and vision definitions and the development advice come from Bain's guide to mission and vision statements. The professional objective criteria and the three example objectives come from Professional Objectives: Do you have a Mission? What about a Vision?.