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Make your Mission, Vision, and Core Values Relatable

You’re the CEO. As part of your company’s strategic plan, you’ll need to clearly articulate your mission, vision, and values statement to inspire your employees.

A vision statement imbued with passion, a mission statement that’s purpose-driven, and a values statement that reflects your core values are the sometimes-overlooked touches that can prepare your company for success. As much as your mission, vision, and values statements matter to you and motivate you to go to work each day, these statements must also matter to your employees and business-related stakeholders.

The strategic planning process begins with thoughtfully written mission, vision, and values statements that can invigorate employees and articulate why you’re in business. When communicated effectively, these statements spark curiosity and profoundly influence your stakeholders—customers, suppliers, investors, and mass media—into doing business with you.

Along with these statements, clearly defined short- and long-term goals help your company run like a well-oiled machine and clarify what’s required of your employees today (your mission) so that your company succeeds in the future (your vision) while staying true to your company’s core beliefs (your values).

Mission

Your company’s mission statement focuses on present-day strategies that employees must enthusiastically support to help realize your company’s goals. It defines your company’s purpose, the industry and markets you serve, customers you serve, the services and products you provide, and the logistics of how you provide them. This is your company’s “marquee,” illuminated with a few succinct sentences.

Vision

Your vision is like a stable old oak tree. It’s enduring. It’s concrete. Your company’s vision is motivational and forward-looking: it defines where you want to go and what steps you’ll take to prepare for the future. Will you grow through mergers or acquisitions? Will you expand into new geographic territories? Will you add new products or services? Will you enter into partnerships or joint ventures? How will you expand your customer base and build the brand? These important strategic questions require risk-taking decisions that need to be addressed to grow your business. Your strategy for attaining your vision will change depending on the marketing landscape.

Core Values

Your company’s core values are rooted in your moral compass. They’re the catalyst for ethical behavior, and they’ll influence important decisions that drive your mission. Core values are usually fleshed out collectively among your leaders and in consultation with your employees to gain their cooperation. Achieving consensus is easier when employees believe in your ideals and can unite around them. Holding management-led department meetings and frequently reiterating the company’s strategies, goals, and action plans help reinforce the company’s mission, but core values are critical to upholding them. Hiring the right candidates who share your values is unequivocally important.

As your company’s CEO, how will you set the tone for employee expectations? When hiring, you should include the company’s core values in the job advertisement along with the job requirements. For new hires, your employee handbook and your orientation workshop will clarify your expected values and norms. Your loyal employees, who have an excellent work record that epitomizes your company values, can help with onboarding new employees. Continuous training programs that champion your mission, vision, and core values can also accentuate your expectations.

I’d like to expand on values because they are strongly influenced by societal trends. Some companies brilliantly embrace an eco-friendly or socially conscious framework while publicly marketing and capitalizing on their core values. For example, the sock and apparel company, Bombas, offers a happiness guarantee known as “Bee Better.” It’s distinctive because the company’s unsurpassed customer service provides a hassle-free 100 percent money-back guarantee or a new pair of socks for unsatisfied customers. Its humanitarian mission—to donate a pair of socks to the homeless for every pair it sells—has become the driving force for massive sales. How’s that for successfully weaving core values, a socially conscious mission, and a marketing strategy into a quality pair of socks?

4ocean is a green company whose social and environmental mission has universal appeal. The company cleans oceans and coastlines while working to stop the inflow of plastic waste products. It hopes to change consumption habits worldwide, as it removes harmful plastics that can be inadvertently swallowed by our precious marine life. Funded primarily by sales of products produced from the removal of plastic debris, each product they sell eliminates one pound of trash from oceans, rivers, and coastlines!  4ocean’s multifaceted, purpose-driven mission of changing consumption habits, cleaning debris from our waterways, and saving our sea creatures provides incalculable value to society.

Many green companies intentionally integrate the principles of the 3Ps, “people, planet, and profits,” into their core values. Priding themselves on the 3Ps principles, they select environmentally or socially responsible initiatives that align with their companies’ core values. They repurpose, recycle, and use renewables for cost-saving efficiencies in their manufacturing processes. This modi operandi has proven extremely successful, considering the laudable financial position that green companies tout in their marketing and annual reports, not to mention the intangible assets of admiration, trust, loyalty, and brand equity that along with a stellar reputation, will yield dividends in long-term wealth.

Your employees and stakeholders should understand how your company‘s mission, vision, and values statements relate to each other and are “genetically linked” to your company. This begins with a strategic plan. Moreover, the importance of hiring employees who will rally around your company’s core values, share its common goals, and eagerly adopt your strategic plan can’t be understated.

A strategic plan also prepares your company for unforeseen uncertainties in the outside world, such as a pandemic or market crash, or internal problems, such as cash flow setbacks, innovation impairment, or customer retention issues. A strategic plan is a communication tool that unifies your company’s purpose and provides a strategic road map to guide your employees in doing quality work.

If you haven’t developed your company’s mission, vision, and core values statements, or have never thought about preparing a strategic plan, you should consider doing so now!

Here are other successful companies whose mission, vision, and core values statements are proven winners!

 Instacart

Instacart is an American company that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada via a website and mobile app.

Instacart Mission

To revolutionize grocery shopping via proprietary technology that provides on-demand access to popular brick-and-mortar retailers, saving consumers’ time by shopping for groceries and delivering them to their doorsteps within an hour.

Instacart Vision

To be the world leader in online grocery, leveraging partnerships and operational capabilities to venture into new markets and segments.

Instacart Core Values

• Customer focus
• Humility
• Solving problems
• Getting things done quickly
• Making customers happy

Asana Inc.

Asana is a software-as-a-service navigation system that connects daily tasks to company objectives and simplifies team-based management.

Asana Inc. Mission

To help humanity thrive by enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly.

Asana Inc. Vision

To be your organization’s navigation system, so you can achieve your company’s mission faster.

Asana Inc. Core Values

• Mindfulness
• Clarity
• Do great things efficiently
• Co-creation
• Give-and-take responsibility
• Reject false tradeoffs
• Be real (with yourself and others)
• Heartitude
• Equanimity (over Suffering)
• Egolessness

Patagonia

Patagonia Inc. is an American clothing company that markets and sells outdoor clothing.

 Patagonia Mission

“Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

Patagonia Vision

“Use the resources we have—our business, our investments, our voices, and our imaginations—to protect life on Earth.”

Patagonia Core Values

Our core values reflect a business founded by a band of climbers and surfers and the minimalist style they promoted.

Build the best product

• Our criteria for creating the best products is to focus on function, repairability, and—foremost—durability. A direct way we can limit our ecological impact is to sell goods that last for generations or can be recycled so that the materials remain in use. Making the best product matters for saving the planet.

Cause no unnecessary harm

• We know that our business activity—from lighting stores to dyeing shirts—is part of the problem. We work steadily to change our business practices and share what we’ve learned. Nevertheless, we recognize this is not enough. We seek to not only do less harm but also do more good.

Use business to protect nature

• The challenges we face as a society require leadership. Once we identify a problem, we act. We embrace risk and act to protect and restore the stability, integrity, and beauty of the web of life.

Ignore the restrictions of convention

• Our success—and much of the fun—lies in developing new ways to do things.

Give back for every sale

• We’ve pledged 1 percent of sales to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment.

Newman’s Own

Started on a whim, Newman’s Own specialty foods company grew a business dedicated to philanthropy!

Newman’s Own Mission

Paul Newman, a famous Hollywood actor, created Newman’s Own as a way to acknowledge how lucky he was, the benevolence of it in his life and the brutality of it in the lives of others. One hundred percent of Newman’s Own product sales fuel a winning philanthropic mission that supports the Newman’s Own Foundation, which uses the power of giving to help transform lives and nourish the common good.

Newman’s Own Vision

Newman’s Own vision is related to its core values and governs the Newman’s Own Foundation. Its core value is also the company’s common purpose: We treasure the virtuous circle of Newman’s Own products that augment our philanthropic mission.

Consistent with Paul Newman’s casual style, the grant-giving process relies on staff intuition and its partnerships in relation to the core value of Trust & Respect.

To create appealing recipes that families love, the company’s food products are created from only the finest ingredients. Brand reputation and public trust coincide with the core value of Quality, which is paramount for increasing product sales because Newman’s Own products and the Newman’s Own Foundation are interconnected.

Newman’s Own Core Values

• Common Purpose:We treasure the virtuous circle of Newman’s Own.
• Freedom to Dream:We are a creative and inclusive idea factory that can respond and adapt quickly.
• Trust & Respect:We trust and respect our colleagues.
• Quality:We execute our goals with excellence and the highest level of transparency, ethics, and integrity.
• Serious Fun:We take our work seriously but not ourselves.

Bombas, 4ocean, Patagonia, and Newman’s Own, are excellent examples of purpose-driven companies, whose insightful CEOs carefully examined what their company brand represents. They’ve woven meaningful social concerns into their mission and core values statements that resonate with the public and deliver value far beyond profits. They’ve invested a portion of their profits into raising awareness about pressing global concerns and solving them.

By today’s standards, heavily competitive firms in narrow markets must understand that profitability alone is not the way forward. Humanity loves charitable causes. A meaningful, personally relatable mission can bolster your company brand and boost sales by opening up new markets, channels, and customer segments.

The relationship between your mission, core values, and vision, as unified with your strategic business goals, strengthens your company brand. Whether you render superior services like Bombas and Patagonia, form an emotional bond with consumers like 4ocean and Newman’s Own, or deliver on-demand efficiencies like Asana Inc. and Instacart, a strong brand can differentiate your company from competitors and garner additional business value.

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By Patti Kondel, CEO, Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing, MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and MA, from Emerson College, Boston. Patti is a business and marketing strategist, brand booster, lover of the arts, yoga practitioner, content creator, and cookie connoisseur (the sweet variety—as well as Internet cookies for marketing consumption)! Let me help you trumpet your business to the world!  Contact me today!

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