The Difference Between Business Mission and Vision

I am frequently asked the question “What is the difference between business mission and vision?”

In a nutshell, a business Vision Statement describes WHERE you are going; 

while the Mission Statement tells WHY.

The Vision Statement is about how you’ll know when you are THERE.  As in “we are taking the business to new heights”.  OK, where exactly are those new heights and what does that mean?  Some business experts advocate that an effective Vision Statement answers the question: “What Business Are You In?”  I would like to add that it should be exciting and inspiring.  When you write a Vision Statement that works, you know it instantly.  It sends a clear message to the universe of exactly what you would like to achieve, and you are able to look at it and think “now that’s a worthy challenge, yes, I/we want to do that.” 

In my first business, I didn’t have a plan and I didn’t trouble myself to write out a vision, I just wanted to set up a successful practice and I couldn’t understand why I seemed to be locked into one operating level .  This time around, I vowed it would be different.  So I sat down and thought through how I wanted to live, how big the business would have to be to support that,  and as I planned and visualized, I realized that this was big, a whole new level, and that there were many reasons that went far, far beyond self interest why I should do it.  When I’m feeling lethargic or low for some reason, thinking about my vision helps me refocus my energies and get back into motion.  If your Vision Statement is very wordy, or has become part of the furniture, it’s time to re-energize it.  My Mastermind workshops operate on the principle that the Vision and the rest of the plan need to be worked and re-worked regularly, and that doing this in community with others is exceptionally powerful.

While this article would be too long if I included the exercises and questions to help guide you towards articulating a Vision Statement, one tip I would like to include is the use of Vision Boards or some kind of visual representation.  Include your team while you are creating this graphic.  Explaining the pictures sparks great conversations and ideas.  You might try employing the services of a graphic recorder/facilitator.  When a vision is shared by many people and they are all holding clear images of their roles and perhaps how things might be different, real magic starts to happen.  

  

The Mission Statement communicates to your stakeholders (employees, partners, shareholders, customers, raving fans . . .) WHY you are going THERE.  It helps people who may (or may not) wish to join you in achieving your Vision, decide if their values are in alignment.  When a potential partner of mine read my Mission statement and realized I was all about helping creative entrepreneurs set up their own small business profitably; she realized she wasn’t interested in joining the business, it just wasn’t close enough to her personal sense of purpose (which was more around corporate culture change).  It was disappointing, but much better to know before we made any contractual arrangements.

Most of us address the question “What is my purpose?” at some time in our lives.  Aligning your company with your personal sense of purpose and communicating that alignment, respects everyone’s sense of purpose.   A well written Mission Statement is something that speaks to people, customers included, of who you really are, and can provide a sense of meaning for you and others if the going gets rough.

Sitting down to write a Mission Statement, or communicating one out loud for the first time, can be anxiety producing for people.   In our society it is still a bit unconventional, even for personal growth workshop junkies like myself, to say these things out loud.   My business training using NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) workshops help people access the information they may be holding at an “other than conscious” level, while the support and witnessing of the group makes it possible to create a meaningful business Mission Statement.   The best tip I can give small business owners and creative entrepreneurs for creating a useful Mission Statement is to work with some sort of group, even if you have to create it yourself.

Still have questions?  There is more information and examples on my website (artemiscp.com on the blogroll) under the “Resouces” tab.

5 Things to Know About Small Business Strategy

First of all, you need one.  If you want to get somewhere, it is important to both clarify where you are going and HOW (your strategy) you are going to get there.  If we use driving as a metaphor, we rarely drive without a destination (Vision of where we want to be) in mind.  We also pick a route (the Strategy); we choose how we are going take the myriad of baby steps that will take us to our destination.  Every time I drive to my office, I have to decide between several routes.  My chosen strategy reflects my knowledge of traffic patterns, amount of time available for the scenic route, and how exactly aggressive I am feeling (do I have the emotional strength today to cut off a whole line of crabby commuters).  We strategize all the time, and directing a business, however small, is no different. 

Strategy can be simple.  You don’t have to be WalMart to use low pricing as your strategy or a part of it.  You just have figure out how to deliver your uniqueness better than your competition.  By the way, in service industries, it is often a more useful frame to hold local practitioners of the same service as colleagues, while competitors would be especially large or distant providers.  To create a strategy, focus on defining your unique competitive advantage; the reason (benefit) why anybody who needs your service should use you and not A.N. Other.  Be careful to separate the features of your service from the benefits to the customer and in your strategy focus on the benefits.

Selling information and expertise is increasingly common in today’s economy, so I wanted to mention a strategy that is widely used in the consulting and training industry, especially when the service is unconventional and the potential clients have to be taught what the service is and what it can do.  The “funnel” strategy has you create low price/free entry point products (the wide end of the funnel), then a progression of mid-tier products ($100 to several thousand dollars), and finally your consulting service.  The low price/free entry products (information workshops, audio conferences, books, $7-$25 CD recordings… anything that’s priced between free and a not too special evening out) allow potential customers to get an experience of you.  As trust builds, they may choose to attend a workshop or buy a more expensive DVD seminar . . . ultimately some customers may fall off, but some will “funnel” into more lucrative consulting customers.  The strategy is based on the retail concept that, if you want to have someone come into your store, you need to make it easy for them to leave.

Big businesses need to spend thousands of dollars analyzing industry trends because they spend millions creating a product or implementing a strategy.  Recognize the strength of being a small business.  You can change your product or service to meet changes in the marketplace much more quickly than a large company can.  So, you don’t need to spend your precious resources on lengthy industry analysis (unless you will be investing more than 100K in development and/or you are seeking significant funding). However, you do need to be aware of industry trends, what is happening in the world that could affect your business, and most importantly the direct feedback of your customers (both the ones who chose to buy and the ones who are “your customers” but didn’t buy from you).

If something isn’t working, it may be time to work with a coach, or someone who you trust, to think outside the box (it’s quite hard to see this on your own).  First figure out if it’s your own belief limitation or if it’s actual market feedback (your product isn’t quite in the right format to meet customers’ needs or the market/environment just changed radically e.g. when the internet changed the travel industry).  In the latter case, use your fleet small business sense and do something different; change your strategy.

 

Resources:

For more on the “funnel” strategy: Marketing and Promoting Your Own Seminars and Workshops by Fred Gleeck

 

For more on separating benefits from features, articulate your unique competitive advantage, and position yourself as an “info-guru”: Robert Middleton http://www.actionplan.com/

 

For coaching and development resources go to Artemis Consulting Partners http://www.artemiscp.com/  where you can also find an unconventional and free business plan template for creative entrepreneurs

What do I do now?

OK, so if there’s such a good reason (see last post “Help! I didn’t do it.”) . . . what is it?

I have certainly had the experience of banging my head against the wall, wanting to do my goal and spending way more time and effort on banging and wanting than it would have taken to just do it.  Lists are one of my favorite delay tactics.

I think my reasons come into two categories: environmental and belief/identity.  Environmental means that there actually is a reality based reason why I didn’t do it, or possibly there is something wrong with the choice – like when I wanted to go on this huge cleanse and I was an extreme junk food and caffeine addict.  I could have done the cleanse, but it would have thrown my body for a loop, and I would not have been very functional at a period of time when I needed to focus and get things done.  I also would not have learned how to manage my feelings in a day by day sort of way – gradual changes proved much more effective for me. 

Sometimes we intuitively know something is environmentally wrong but it takes awhile to understand it logically.  For example, I thought I wanted to take a class and kept hesitating, losing the paperwork, forgetting to call . . . it was frustrating because I thought it would help my business, so completion was a goal; then later I found out it was a recruitment venue for a well known cult.

Those intuitive balk instances are sometimes hard to separate from the belief/identity cases.  In the latter case there is a conflicting belief that’s getting in the way.  For example take someone who was criticized a lot as a child.  They may have an underlying organizing belief of “I am worthless”.  So if they start actively executing their priority actions and achieving their success goals, they are challenging that belief and might end up blowing everything up; just so that they can prove themselves right.  That’s where NLP coaching and change-work comes in.  NLP provides elegant processes to identify those deeply held, but often hidden, beliefs and shift them. (don’t know about NLP? check out the NLP Marin website on the blog roll)

Here are some questions to help you identify whether there are environmental or belief/identity reasons why your action execution priorities keep slipping out of reach:

• Do you really want to do this? (Is it in line with your Vision and Mission – don’t have one? Check out our free business plan template on the blogroll link for Artemis Consulting Partners)
• Is the goal framed in a do-able chunk size?  (I’m going to call all 350 people on my database and ask for referrals would not be a do-able chunk size for me.  I’d get overwhelmed and do nothing.  I’m going to call these seven people this week, or set 15min/day aside for outbound phone calls would work for me.)
•  Is there an easier way?  Or better yet, can you pay someone else to do it better/faster?
• How many items are on your “to-do” list.  Keep it to 3-5 open items at any time.
• Has an item been there so long that it is no longer achievable?  For example: I’m going to write 100 pages by July 30^th – goal set in January but it’s now July 20^th and you’ve written the title page.  Forget it.  Update your action execution priorities regularly to reflect what’s actually happening.

 If your action item passes all the environmental tests and it’s still not happening, it might be time to work with a coach and find out what belief and or identity issues might be going on underneath the surface of things.  Sometimes it helps to have someone look at it with you from the outside.

Help! I didn’t do it.

When I was in the 6^th grade, there was a boy, Tom Kitschner *, who when asked any question relating to the homework, always replied, “I didn’t do it.”  Even when he could have faked it, Tom would astound us all by standing up, looking the teacher in the eye, and saying,

“I didn’t do it.”

What amazed my little 6^th grade mind was not that Tom didn’t do it.  If it comes to that, heck, I probably had not done it either.  The amazing thing was that he would stand up, day after day, and ADMIT IT.

While the rest of us were scrambling, trying to guess what number we’d be called on to answer, Tom would just stand up and ADMIT he didn’t do it to the whole world.

It occurs to me now that kid, who I found out much later was actually exceptionally bright, already knew something about who he was, and had a sense of worth beyond social conventions.  There is a lesson in there somewhere.

The FIRST STEP in getting our priorities executed is to admit, especially to ourselves, if we are consistently not doing them.  Not doing things means nothing about who we are; or how important our goals are to us.  It does not bring our worth as a human being into question.   It just means there is a choice being made at some other than conscious level, and we have some work to do to track down what we ARE doing, the CHOICE we are making.

Facing up to the fact that we have not done something we said we would do allows us to explore any belief patterns, re-choose, and create a realistic timeline from where we really are.  Go ahead, Admit where you are.

*              Name has been changed.

How do I start running a cash flow projection?

The truth is you just start. 

Then you keep going back and refining it. Again and again.  Every month.   The more detailed and up to date it is, the more it can help you make better decisions.

Open a blank spreadsheet (or click on the blogroll link to the Artemis web site where you can follow links to free cash flow template downloads), name the columns by month for the first year across the top, start putting income categories on the left to name the rows, below it list cost categories, and start filling in your best estimates. If you don’t know anything about income, assume nothing and at least start planning your expenditures.  If you’ve been in business for awhile, but never run projections start with costs and income that are fairly predictable, and each month add more rows/categories until you have a clear and useful picture.

The first year plan by months, the next two by quarters, after that you can just predict by year.  If you are looking for funding you’ll need to get very detailed, and do projections for five years.  If you’re not, just do as much as is relevant to steer your business.  Use your vision statement to guesstimate any major investments, moves, or new income.  If your business is a function of market or population growth or any predictable number you can use percents to predict income growth.

My overall plan changed dramatically in the first 6 months every time I reviewed it (at that time almost weekly).  I had no idea about what the numbers should be, even costs were sketchy.  It seemed every week I’d have a new “focus” idea and I was bouncing all over the place as new information came into my life.  So for the first few months I just skipped the numbers part.  Looking back it would have been helpful to run more numbers on costs, as it would have helped me plan my cash outlays and debt management. 

Once I started running a cash flow projection, I never went back.  Now it’s part of my monthly process to review my numbers.  Even though my numbers were ludicrously off base and incomplete in the beginning they helped me prioritize my actions and showed me where my objectives were unrealistic, so I could change and update the plan accordingly.  I also only did my plan for three years because it was too scary to think beyond that and I’m not looking for venture capital.  In the Artemis business plan basic training we teach people how to select an appropriate time frame and how to get a rudimentary projection going.  Like the vision, mission, strategy, and marketing plan it’s a lot easier to do with friends.  Find out about the Artemis’ “Business Plan Basic Training” workshop or download our free business plan template by clicking on our link on the blogroll.

To plan or not to plan?

The statistics on new venture success rates are not encouraging to the new venture developer.  Conventional wisdom gives us a 50-50 shot while even more pessimistic figures are routinely published.  Pick up any “Business 101” text and one of the first pieces of advice it’ll give you is: “Make a Five Year Business Plan”.  And yet, and yet . . . even MBA’s from renowned institutions with puh-lenty of business experience, people who really ought to have known better, people who have been professional corporate planners . . . have tried to start businesses without a plan.  Tried, and failed (or rather just never moved beyond the survival level) .   Not that I’m speaking from personal experience or anything, heh, heh.

 

Writing a business plan, and rewriting it every month has been a profound experience for me and has taken my businesses, and my business concept to a level I never expected when I started the process.  So why did I ever try a business without one? 

Typical internal protests included:

• But the business is just me; and I can manage myself.

• But I have no idea what the costs or revenues will be, so how can I make a projection?

• But I’m not looking for any funding.

• But all this Vision and Mission stuff is so airy fairy, it doesn’t change the bottom line (said with an extra dose of sarcasm and ignoring the fact that large and successful corporations spend millions each year on defining and communicating Vision and Mission).

and the all time favorite:

• But I don’t have time to do a plan, I’m too busy, I need to get____done today.

 

An astute observer – like you – will notice that all those protests began with the word “But”,  a sure sign to anyone with even a slightly evolved personal development kind of consciousness, that they are all fictitious beliefs.

 

I think the main problem for me, and others is that people view “the plan” as a final product – a static document.  If there are deviations, which there always will be in any healthy business, they use the document to feel failure instead of success.  Who wants to spend time on a document that stays in a drawer until it’s time to feel crappy and beat yourself up?

 

I learned instead to use the plan as a dynamic document, constantly revising it as circumstances change, so it became a focusing tool.  The process I developed, uses a postable cover page where you can clarify your intention to the point where Good Things Start to Happen.  The Universe, God, the Force, the Market, whatever you want to call the Powers that Be respond to clear intentions.  By thinking through a strategy, you can line up all the dominoes of your business tools (e.g. your marketing message, sales process, your administration system and most importantly your team), much more easily and make difficult investment decisions, because you know what result you are intending.

 

Not sure how to get started?  Click on the blogroll link to Artemis Consulting Partners – we have not only described exactly what to do, we have also provided you with a free business plan template.