In a sentence or two, without much thought, most business owners can tell you what their company is about, right off the top of their head. That instinct is usually right. The problem is that instinct doesn’t scale. It doesn’t get written into a hiring decision, a pricing policy, or a five-year plan unless someone puts it to words first.
That’s really all a vision, mission and values statement is: naming what you already know, so it can actually do something for the business.
Why Bother Writing it Down
A vision, mission, and values statement isn’t a branding exercise, it’s a reference point every strategic decision gets checked against. When a company sits down to plan, the first question isn’t, “what should we do next?” its, “does this fit who we are and where we’re going?” Without a documented answer, that check either doesn’t happen or happens differently in every person’s head.
Example:
Canopy & Clover Landscaping Ltd., a fictional residential landscaping company in Canada that’s grown from two crews to six over five years. The owners have always known why they do things a certain way – they just haven’t written any of it down. As they hire more supervisors, who make decisions without them, the gap starts to matter.
Vision: Where You’re Headed
A vision statement is a future-facing and, ideally, a little aspirational. Its job is to give people inside the company something to believe in and the outcome the company is working toward. A useful vision statement answers questions like:
- What does success ultimately look like?
- What would the world look like if we got everything right?
- Where does our value actually come from?
Example:
After considering their community focus and picture of success, the owners of Canopy & Clover drafted their vision statement:
“To be the reason every neighborhood we work in looks and feels cared for.”
Painting a picture of success for the crew, this is an effective vision statement in its bereft, clarity, and evocation of an emotional connection.
Mission: How You’ll Get There
If the vision is the destination, the mission is the route. A mission statement is a plainer, more practical declaration of the company’s purpose: what it does, for whom, and roughly how. It’s communicated both internally and externally, so it needs to hold up as something customers and employees can recognize as true.
Example:
With their new supervisors in mind, the owners of Canopy & Clover drafted their mission statement”
“We design and maintain outdoor spaces that hold up season after season, built on relationships with clients we keep for years, not one season.”
This statement rules out chasing one-off jobs at the expense of on-going clients, which is a vital reminder to supervisors (and signal to clients) what the company’s purpose is and how Canopy & Clover will get there.
Values: What You Won’t Compromise On
Values are the operating principles underneath the vision and mission, whatever genuinely governs behaviour in the company. At its core, a values statement spells out the company’s non-negotiable beliefs and principles; the things that reinforce the vision and mission, and overtime, become culture.
Example:
Canopy & Clover have settled on three main values:
- Reliability – To show up when promised,
- Craftsmanship – To do it right the first time, and
- Respect – To treat every yard like it’s your own.
Clarity here does double duty: clients know exactly what kind of service they’re signing up for, and crew members have something concrete to fall back on when a judgement call comes up on the job.
Turning Statements into Action: SMART Objectives
Vision, mission, and values only earn their keep once they inform actual targets. For an efficient and effective means of measuring performance, each objective should be stated in a way that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (SMART):
- Specific: detailed enough that everyone understands exactly what’s expected,
- Measurable: trackable, quantifiable, verifiable,
- Aligned: clearly tied back to the vision and mission, not just convenient,
- Realistic: a stretch, but achievable, and
- Timely: tied to a date or defined period.
Strategic objectives are the concrete commitments a company holds itself to, and specific enough that everyone knows whether they were met.
Not everything is equally easy to put a number on. Reputation and customer loyalty are real, but harder to quantify than revenue. Even so, setting objectives gives a company something concrete to check its progress against, grounded in actual goals, vision, mission, and values.
Example:
Canopy & Clover are looking for long-term relationships and to focus on their craftsmanship value, and have drafted the following strategic objectives:
- Increase multi-year maintenance contracts by 20% of total revenue within 24 months.
- Reduce call-backs and rework quests to under 5% of completed jobs within 12 months.
Keep Checking Alignment
Mission and values should be built to last, they’re not meant to shift with every season or setback. But, circumstances do change and it’s worth revisiting these statements periodically to confirm they still hold, rather than letting them go stale while the business moves on without them.
If putting your own version of this into words feels harder than it sounds, that’s normal. Most owners know the substance long before they write the sentence. Starting rough, testing it with your executive team, and refining from there works better than waiting for the perfect draft.
