Vision. Purpose. Mission.  You may see businesses, brands and marketing teams using these words interchangeably, but at Blue Feathers we know they don’t mean the same thing.

While some grumble that ‘we never had vision and purpose in my day – a brand key was good enough’, others struggle to comprehend why you would work for a business that’s not clear on why it exists or what positive impact it’s trying to have on the world. And though cynics might view vision, mission and purpose as mere window dressing for a company’s real (financial) motivations, done well, they can help to bridge business divides and free the creativity of all teams in pursuit of a common goal.

 

Which do I need? Vision? Purpose? Or Mission?

The answer is: all of them! Each plays a different role in the business, operating at different levels and supporting different aspects of organisational behaviour and decision making. We’ll look at each of them in turn.

Vision

Let’s start at the beginning. What’s a vision? It’s a dream of how the world will look when your business, working alongside every other organisation who has the same vision, has achieved its ambition. For an electric vehicle manufacturer, the vision could be a ‘carbon neutral future’, a vision which is shared by countless others from renewable energy companies to climate campaigners. Likewise, many organisations could share the vision for ‘a world where everyone enjoys a healthy and happy old age’ – from pension providers to shoe manufacturers to charities, governments and care homes.

Which leads us to purpose…

Purpose

is the unique role that your business can play in delivering the vision – it’s the reason for your business to exist. If your vision is of a carbon-neutral society, your purpose – the contribution your business will make to achieving that vision – could be to make electric vehicles a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine.

Or, if your vision is of a world where everyone enjoys a healthy and happy old age, your purpose could be to make financial planning for retirement easier and more accessible; or to improve access to care for the elderly; or to design footwear that keeps older people mobile for longer.

Each of these purposes reflects the part a business can uniquely play, alongside others, in achieving that common dream, and seeing that shared vision come to life.

Mission

So where does mission come in? Mission is more specific, and it can be helpful to think of it as the current mission. To use a military analogy, it’s the hill you’re trying to conquer, or the defences you’re tying to breach. It’s the battle, rather than the war. Most organisations will have more than one mission over their lifetime, and in the very largest businesses, there may be a number of simultaneous missions across the organisation. What’s crucial is that each mission contributes to the overall purpose.

The company driving the switch to electric vehicles might have a current mission of ‘creating the world’s most appealing electric car’, or ‘making electric industrial vehicles as cheap and reliable as a diesel tractor’. For the business focused on retirement planning, the current mission could be ‘to reshape financial planning products so they’re better suited to a tech-savvy audience.  For the footwear company, perhaps it’s ‘to create the world’s most stable, trip resistant trainer’. Each of these is a specific mission that may last 3, 5, 10 years or longer.

When vision, purpose and mission unite

We can see then that there’s a distinct role for vision, purpose and mission. As an executive team, it’s essential to be clear on how your business operates in line with each of the three. You need:

  1. A vision which inspires and unites, and gives people a positive reason to go to work every day. Your vision should be a dream worth fighting for, a wider story you want to be part of, and help you find partners to build into your ecosystem that are on the same path, rather than just competitors to beat.
  2. A purpose which explains why your business specifically does what it does. What its role is in achieving the vision. What part it plays. A clearly expressed purpose can guide decision making, inform capability development, and shape your long term business strategy.
  3. A mission that flows into the day-to-day. It should be tangible and specific enough for everyone to see the part they can play, with defined milestones to celebrate. The current act in this play. It also needs to be commercially viable, creating sustainable growth and providing a structure to organise your operations around.

 

Focusing on the right thing

While it’s important to have vision, purpose and mission in place, you don’t need to talk about all three to the same level of depth in your organisation. Different businesses need different orientations, at different points in time:

  • Vision oriented: Some organisations need clarity on their north star – people need to be engaged and inspired around a higher order vision, to give context and perspective to their day-to-day work.
  • Purpose oriented: In contrast, some businesses need to organise around their purpose, either lifting their heads up beyond the mission in front of them, or specifying how they make their vision real. Purpose means being clear about your role in the world, your long-term business strategy, what you will and won’t do, and why. It gives broad guidance and strategic direction.
  • Mission oriented: Finally, some businesses need to galvanise around the mission – to turn all their thoughts, energy and resources to the big-exciting-hairy-audacious-goal right in front of them. Missions create motivating and actionable plans. They create progress and delivery.

In summary

Getting vision, purpose and mission right in your organisation is the vital first step in strategy. Alignment here frees your teams to play to their strengths, giving them the confidence and creative freedom to unleash their area of specialist expertise in support of the common goal.

Where have you seen vision, purpose and mission unite to great effect?

If you’d like to find out how we can help you develop your brand’s vision, purpose and mission, please reach out to us at Blue Feathers via [email protected]

 

Author: Cheryl Calverley

Cheryl specialises in brand transformation, culture and leadership, and marketing effectiveness. Known for her passion, creativity, clarity of thinking and down-to-earth approach, Cheryl has rejuvenated brands ranging from Marmite, Axe, Birdseye and The AA, to eve sleep and had a guiding hand in the strategies of Gousto, Tapi Carpets, Lovecrafts and Sous Chef. Widely recognised for her impact on the marketing industry, she’s a Fellow of both the Marketing Academy and Marketing Society, with multiple IPA and Effie awards to her name.