Create a Good Mission Statement With These 6 Tips

Mission statements are a great way to keep your company, organization, or project on track. If you’re feeling stuck, a mission statement can help you get back on track and keep moving forward. They set the foundation for what a company does and what it values. Mission statements are good for businesses and non-profit organizations that have a specific goal in mind.

A mission statement is a succinct, clear description of what you do and why you do it. It’s your promise to yourself, your customers, and the world at large about what makes your business unique. Having a mission statement helps align all members of a team, so there’s no confusion about the company’s purpose or goals. The mission can serve as a guidepost for what your company is all about that team members can more easily get on board with.

Tip #1: What are your company’s best attributes?

Finding the best things about your company can help you develop your mission statement. Maybe you give back to a cause. Perhaps you are the most innovative in your field, and you want to highlight that. These are the attributes that give you a unique message in a world with millions of different businesses. Your best attributes should be included in your mission statement. In fact, these mission statement examples show how simple it can be.

Tip #2: State what the company does and make it powerful.

You don’t want something boring like “we make cogs.” Instead, your company might have the mission “to be the top choice for cog manufacturing because we provide a quality product that businesses can count on.” The second one has more power. Your statement should too.

Stating what you do can be easily found in the kinds of products you sell, the impact you want to have on people or businesses in your industry or the audience you serve. One company might only serve women because their products are something only women can use. While another company might create products that only serve certain business sectors. Use your unique focus as a business to develop a powerful way to state what you do.

Tip #3: Communicate the company goals.

While all companies exist to make money, they each fill a unique need in the industry. Company goals help drive the direction of a business. This could be anything from bringing clean water to remote villages to offering affordable homes to people living in cities. No matter the goals, they need to be clearly communicated to move forward with a mission statement. When you understand the goals of the company you’ll also be able to make wise business decisions that align with those goals instead of struggling to make the right choices.

Tip #4: Choose how you will accomplish those goals.

Having a goal is nice, but having a plan to get there is even better. As a business, you need to connect your goal to action. Perhaps your goal is to help people live independently as they age. You accomplish this by offering in-home health services to them. Or maybe it’s your goal to create innovative technology that helps people communicate from around the globe, and you accomplish it by developing new video chat technology.

Tip #5: Don’t forget to consider why you exist as a company.

While similar to setting and accomplishing goals, your reason for existence could operate outside of those two things. Finish this sentence for your company: We exist to______. We exist to eradicate poverty by offering no-interest business loans to help people in impoverished areas earn a living wage. We exist to create innovative solutions that empower artists. The “why you exist” statement can become an essential part of your mission statement.

Tip #6: Be specific.

It’s important to avoid generic terms and to use specific words when you create your mission statement. Just being a telecommunications company is great, but when you connect people to each other over a distance, that’s what makes your mission and your story compelling. Having a financial firm is fine, but when your goal is to help your clients create generational wealth, that’s where the real mission lies. So, be specific.

When you’ve looked through all these tips, sit down and create a first draft. Then, refining each category will make it clearer and clearer what words should be used as a mission.