Mission Vision Goals and Objectives

Do you know the difference between vision, mission, goals and objectives ?

Almost all the businesses have Vision, Mission statements, Goals, Strategies, Tactics and Objectives but some are often confused between when it comes to difference between them “Mission” and “Vision” and the way are they associated with one another and with Goals and objectives. But I believe all four of those things are vital in establishing and building a fantastic business, yet that many of us will actually confuse purpose with mission and mission with vision.

Stephen Covey in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,”  say that we should “Begin with the end in mind,” which means that we need to focus on achieving our long-term goals and aspiration before even attempting to accomplish anything.

The point I wanted to make here is that it does not make a difference how much you make as a company if you do not know where you are currently in present and where you are going in future. This is where these vision and mission statement comes in handy which guides the business.

Both Mission and vision are highly confusing terms and often used interchangeably but there is lot of difference between these two. Mission and vision statements are not about bottom line i.e. or how much you are making profit or even about your how much you are generating sales annually  or what are your budgets or even your employees. They’re about why your organization exists as of today and where it’s going from here.

Let understand this in more details:

Vision

Vision statements are considered as a critical component in any strategic plan and the reason is because these strategic plans are all about creating a different future which is then articulated in your vision statement. Vision statement needs to be concise and clear but it needs to paint a picture for where you are going and why you want to go there. And that’s your critical word here is to remember, is “Where.”  Where are you going as a company? What does success look like in the future for you?

Vision talks about “Where” does one wants to reach in Future say for e.g. 5 years or 10 yrs from now”. Example Company XYZ wants to be leader in manufacturing of Electric vehicles. Vision statement articulates the future of the company where the company is heading towards and lays out what it seeks to become in long terms says for example 5 years or 10 yrs from now. Vision provides bases foundation for defining mission statement.

Vision statement should be :

• Short and Brief
• Written in simple language
• Crystal Clear
• Complete from all aspects
• Non ambiguous
• Non conflicting
• Motivation for employee

Mission

Mission talks about “What” is that the reason for your presence of your organization or what’s the fundamental reason why you came in this business ”. In short, Mission statement is a written description of an organization’s purpose for existing. Mission statement will help other know what we do and why are we in this business.

Mission statement should be :

• In line with Vision statement
• Complete from all aspects
• Non ambiguous
• Non conflicting

In short a mission statement keeps the organization focused on doing the work today, while a vision statement tries to determine what the mission statement will look like five, 10, or 25 years from now. These two Mission and Vision defines the overall growth strategy of any company

A mission statement describes the present activity that company is performing, while a vision statement paints a picture of the entity’s future. Put another way, the mission statement explains the company’s reason for being present, while the vision gives its purpose for the future.

One thing we’d like to bring to your attention here is that profit or revenue or even sales can’t be 
Mission or Vision of any company, but yes it is an ultimate final outcome of all of your efforts that company puts in when they works towards their respective Vision and Mission. So the flow start from first defining the Vision of the company and from this Vision company defines its short terms Mission statements. Once we have defined our mission and vision statements company can now focus on defining its goals and objectives.

Goals

Goals are defined from what company wants to realize. It can be profit or good customer service Goals are usually expressed as percentage (%) in measurable terms. These should be SMART goals where SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timebound. Say for example our one of goals could be to have 15% increase in revenue or 10% decrease in non-value added activities. Companies normally define their goals and objectives in their vision and mission statements.

Objectives

Objectives are the specific actions taken to achieve these goals

Say for E.g. my Goal is to “Increase revenue by 10% and decrease waste reduction by 5%”, then based on this goal I will formalize my objectives based on this goal which can be

My 1^st goal is “Increase revenue by 10%”

• Add 5 new customer and retain at least 2 customer.

My 2^nd goal is “Decrease waste reduction by 5%”,

• Optimize the process Or outsourced some process to save cost and time.

Let look at the Mission and Vision statements of  Top  more details like Tesla Motors, Microsoft Corporations and Google.

Tesla Motor Vision and Mission Statement

Vision statement: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

Mission statement : To create the Most compelling car company of the 21st Century by driving the World’s transition to electric vehicles.

Microsoft Vision and Mission Statement

Vision statement: To help People and Business throughout the world realize their full potential.

Mission statement : To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Google Vision and Mission Statement

Vision statement: To provide access to world’s information in one click .

Mission statement : Organizing the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful

Amazon Vision and Mission Statement

Vision statement:

Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

Mission statement :

We strive to offer customers a lowest possible price, and the best available selection, and the utmost convenience

So here’s a really good example of how the vision is aspirational, where do you want to go, and guess what they’re kind of close to it already it’s quite amazing how they truly live and breed their vision, and their mission statement is really more on that whole strategy and goals, and objectives, they’re very clear with how they’re going to go about doing it, so remember, it’s the where and the how and really good example of how they use both, and here’s another vision mission statement example.

For questions please leave them in the comment box below and I’ll do my best to get back to those in a timely fashion. And remember to subscribe to Digital eLearning YouTube channel to have our latest videos sent to you while you sleep.