Vision Core · Mission Statement · Module
The statement
What the organisation does, for whom, and to what end — in the present tense, and short enough to be repeated without a document.
The idea
How it works
Three parts do the work: what the organisation does, who it does it for, and to what end. Missing any one produces a sentence that could describe several thousand organisations.
The tense matters more than it sounds. A mission written in the future tense is a vision, and merging the two leaves the organisation without a statement of what it is doing now.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Write it in the present tense
What the organisation does, not what it will do. The future tense belongs to the vision.
- 02
Include all three parts
Activity, audience and end. A mission naming only the activity describes a category rather than a company.
- 03
Keep it repeatable
If it cannot be said from memory, it will be paraphrased, and the paraphrase is the real mission.
- 04
Avoid the words everyone uses
Leading, innovative, world-class. They are load-bearing in no sentence and they crowd out the specifics.
One level in
The components of the statement
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
A mission written in the future tense is a vision, and merging them leaves you with no statement of the present.
The other modules in mission statement
Scope
What business the organisation is in, and what it is not — drawn too narrowly it goes obsolete with the product; drawn too widely it permits anything.
LearnRecognisability
Whether the people doing the work can find it in the sentence — the test that establishes whether the mission is true rather than merely agreed.
LearnKeeping it current
What happens when the organisation changes and the mission does not — because drift into inaccuracy is silent and revision should be an event.
Learn