Creating a mission statement and company vision means you’re building the backbone for your field service business – giving it direction and a stated purpose. And for small businesses, a mission statement and company vision are essential in broadcasting your organization’s core values to your staff and clients.
In this article, we’ll discuss:
- What defines a mission statement
- How to craft a compelling mission statement
- How a company’s vision differs from a mission statement
- Why it’s important to create two versions of your stated company vision
After reading this article, you’ll know how to set the stage for long-lasting success for your business. This means that you’ll have the tools to create a mission statement and company vision that will speak volumes to your employees and ideal customers.
What Is a Mission Statement?
It’s very easy to confuse your mission statement with your company’s declared vision. A mission statement describes the meaning of your day-to-day operations, and the company vision outlines the direction you see your business heading in the future.
The perfect mission statement describes:
- Who You Serve
- What You Do or Make
- Why Your Company Exists
- Your Company’s Overall Goals
As your company grows, objectives and goals are bound to change. Therefore, your mission statement should be revised as needed to reflect the changing priorities of the organization.
There is no hard and fast rule on how frequently to revisit your statements. But once you find your mission and vision statements are no longer fitting your day-to-day and long-term goals, it may be time to revise.
How to Approach Creating a Mission Statement
Creating a mission statement means taking a look at who your business serves, why it exists and how your business operates in the day-to-day.
Answer the following questions to reveal some of the characteristics to include in your mission statement:
What Does Your Company Do?
What product or service does your business provide? For this step, it’s best to strip it down to the basics. Your field service business might:
- Provide plumbing services
- Serve community’s electrical needs
- Provide heating, ventilation and air conditioning services
How Does Your Company Operate?
Depending on your field service business, you might want to list essential core competencies that your company values.
For example:
- Supporting the environment
- Delivering superior customer service
- Keeping residential homes and businesses safe
- Provide indoor comfort to homes and businesses
Why Does Your Company Exist?
Using what you established in the “how you operate” section above, describe the passion behind your business or the drive behind starting your business.
For example:
- We offer locksmith services to keep residential homes and businesses safe.
- Our HVAC services provide comfort to the community throughout the year.
- We uphold the highest standard of customer service because we value human connections.
- We sell high-quality products for contractors and technicians, so these professionals can use those products to create stunning results for their clients.
Your why ties together your what and how to reinforce your mission statement. Once all of these elements are combined, you will capture the essence of your company’s purpose.
Who Does Your Company Serve?
Now you need to define your desired client base. This might be based on a demographic, an industry, or a region. So, how you define your customer is up to you.
Consider exploring these characteristics to define your target customer when creating a mission statement:
- Location
- Interests
- Home/Building Type
Once you define these customer-characteristics you’ll be able to define how you intend to approach serving your clients.
Answering each of the above questions will help create the components necessary to develop a compelling company mission statement.
How to Develop Your Company’s Vision Statement
Think about your company’s purpose, beliefs and values. You can start by examining your long-term goals to determine what direction to steer your company. Then, you can weave those elements into your vision statement.
Also, make sure that your vision statement isn’t too long — a sentence or two is plenty. Everyone in your entire organization should be able to understand and remember it. That way, everyone knows what they’re working towards.
And don’t worry too much if your short two-sentence vision statement doesn’t fully encompass your business operations.
Shannon DeJong, owner of the brand agency House of Who suggests keeping two versions handy: “Have a full-length version of your vision for the leadership’s eyes only. Think of the long version as your reference guide to why you’re in business in the first place.”
Questions to Ask When Creating Your Company’s Vision Statement
To help construct a meaningful company vision, here’s a few areas of focus to help guide the process:
- Impact: How do I want my organization to impact the community, industry, or world?
- Culture: How do I want my values reflected in my employees?
- Interaction: How do I want my customers to see my business/brand?
- Achievement: How do I plan to achieve the goals that my business sets?
These questions will reveal a roadmap to discovering your company’s forward-looking vision and will help to define the future that your company hopes to create.
Tips on Crafting a Meaningful Company Vision
These tips will help you make a vision statement that is unique to your business:
- Use present tense.
- Focus on your beliefs.
- Use company successes.
- Use clear and concise language.
- Dream big; project into the future.
- Use passionate language to make it inspiring.
- Ensure that it aligns with your business goals and values.
Examples of Mission Statements and Company Visions
For more inspiration, below are examples of famous company visions and mission statements. Notice that creating a mission statement means outlining an actionable plan for the present day, while a vision statement is more aspirational, driven by belief.
Mission Statements
- Amazon: “Our mission is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.”
- Google: “Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
- Disney: “To entertain, inform, and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds, and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.”
Company Visions
- American Express: “Provide the world’s best customer experience every day.”
- Microsoft: “To help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.”
- Alzheimer’s Association: “A world without Alzheimer’s and all other dementia.”
Why Creating a Mission Statement and Company Vision Are so Important
Your mission statement and company vision set the foundation for your field service business. Both play an essential role in the organization. Together, we’ve discussed:
- Creating a mission statement defines the organization’s purpose
- The vision statement declares how the organization sees the future
- When used thoughtfully, they create a path towards continued success
- Together, these statements align stakeholders and clients with the goals of the business
Every organization should create a mission statement that is clear and focused on the present and also declare a company vision to communicate their intended direction moving forward.
