Writing an inspiring mission statement (with examples!)

Would you fill your car up with gas, leave your change of clothes, four-legged friend, and GPS at home, and drive aimlessly, with no planned destination?

Or would you rock up at the airport, passport in hand, without any luggage or friends, and dive on the next flight to who knows where?

We’d like to think those questions answer themselves...

A journey without a destination isn’t worth taking, even more so in the business world, where running up a blind alley and ‘winging it’ will, more often than not, land you in a whole heap of bother.

You need to equip yourself with a mission statement, a figurative GPS, if you may, to safely navigate the business terrain and communicate with your target audience effectively.

What is a mission statement?

A mission statement outlines the objectives and values of a solo practitioner, small business, or a large-scale organization.

It focuses on the goal, product, and services, as well as which segment of the market it’ll hone its attention to.

In a nutshell, it answers these two quintessential questions:

What’s your business’ purpose?
Why does it exist?

How to write a mission statement

Different companies adopt different approaches to writing mission statements; as much as we’d love to give you a one-size-fits-all approach, we’re afraid it doesn’t exist. 🤷‍♂️

However, there are key elements you need to pay attention to when you’re writing your mission statement that’ll help you shape your end product.

Value - What value do you bring to your customers and your employees?
Inspiration - Express the reasons people do, and should, want to work for your company.
Credibility - You need to make your company sound reasonable, logical, and rational.
Specificity - The mission statement is about your company, so don’t forget to tailor it to the business itself!

There are some other things to remember, in addition to these four principles, to guide you in creating a mission statement that’ll resonate with your audience.

Don’t waffle

Nobody wants to read War and Peace; the shorter your mission statement is, the better. If you can’t sum up your own company’s mission in a couple of sentences, that’s a problem in itself!

Short, succinct mission statements become ingrained into the minds of the people you wanna target the most - the customers. So, leave your novella in the back of your mind, and keep it short and sweet.

Think about the future

In the words of the Joker (pre-Ledger/Phoenix): Think about the future. 🤡

Many companies make the mistake of writing a mission statement that becomes outdated quickly, and this defeats the purpose of putting it together, in the first place. Your mission statement needs to have longevity; it’s your window of opportunity to community your vision for the future, as well as the present.

Don’t limit your prospects

Add to that, with longevity comes expansion. Hopefully, your client base will grow as time progresses.

With that in mind, don’t tailor your mission statement to one location, or one specialty; this’ll pigeon hole you and hinder your opportunity for growth.

Speak to your employees

A mission statement isn’t a reflection of self - it should be symptomatic of everyone under your roof.

So, with that in mind, it’s important to see what they think; ask for blunt, honest feedback, and encourage team members to make suggestions about how they’d improve it, if possible.

This doesn’t need to be a formalized process, by any means. If anything, you’ll get better feedback if you make less of a song and dance about it!

Don't be afraid to change tack

We’ve all been in a scenario when we think we’ve nailed our objective, smashed it out the park, hit a 3-pointer.

Only to realize we were way off the mark.

The same can happen when you’re penning your mission statement, and instead of convincing yourself all is well in the way of the world, go back and change it.

The minute doubt creeps into your mind, it’s there for a reason - face up to it head-on and create something you wanna show off to your friends, rather than hide away in a dark corner.

Need a source of inspiration (or two)? Let’s take a look at some awesome examples of mission statements in action. 👇

Examples of mission statements

There’s a whole host of mission statements doing the rounds, but as usual, we only ever wanna bring you the very best on offer.

Here are some great examples of companies who’ve been there, done it, and ticked all the right boxes.

Sweetgreen

First up, let’s take a look at the mission statement of Sweetgreen, a company providing healthy food products for their customers:

To inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food.

Why are these 10 words so brief, yet so effective? Simple: They hold relevance for the company; no fillers, no fluff.

The mission statement epitomizes what their goal is, and leaves no questions unanswered as to what they want to bring to their audience.

Easy-peasy.

Trek

Sometimes, you’ve got to nail your colors to the mast and say things in black and white, a method adopted by US-based company Trek, whose mission statement does what it says on the tin:

To aid in the betterment of our planet through cycling.

Trek’s mission statement works on so-many-levels, namely, it’s so simple; after all, why over-complicate matters if you can just say things as they are? They’ve ditched the ambiguity and ensured their audience aren’t left second-guessing what their aim is.

Cycling = bikes. There’s no room for confusion.

TED

To round off a trio of how you should approach mission statements, we’ve turned to TED.

Spread ideas

2 words. 1 idea. 0 confusion.

TED’s succinct mission statement fits the company to a tee. Like its videos, it’s short, snappy, and also leaves no ambiguity surrounding the site’s service: a platform for publishing content and sharing ideas.

What makes a bad mission statement

We’ve shown you the sweet taste of success, now, let’s look at the sour side of mission statements.

You’ll be pleased to know it is possible to transform a mediocre mission statement into something to be proud of, as explained by Dan Heath, co-author of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, as recommended by PMMs on our PMM reading list. 😉

Unfortunately, some companies didn’t get Dan's memo and churned out mission statements that didn’t exactly blow our socks off.

Disney

If there’s one company you’d have thought would produce a mission statement that’d be the envy of every company, it’s Disney, right?

How wrong we were…

To be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services, and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative, and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world.

Zero personality, minimal magical...

Tinkerbell’s skimped on the fairy dust, wouldn’t you say?

Apple

When you think about Apple, one word immediately springs to mind: innovation.

Did the masterminds at HQ have a day off when they conjured up the company mission statement? 🤷‍♂️

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

Mission statements are supposed to be a nod towards the future; don’t dwell on former glories. Granted, every man and his dog have an Apple product, but they’ve missed the point here.

Mission statements aren’t fact sheets. If they were, they’d be called... well, fact sheets.

Mission statements: a product marketer’s perspective

Mission statements are widely considered part and parcel of product marketing. We sought the input from people within the industry to establish their top tips and were treated to varying opinions.

Stu Kendall, GTM Leader and Mentor at VentureSCALE suggested narrative messaging could be a suitable replacement for mission statements:

“It depends on the size of the organization, but I'd challenge the need to have a mission statement at all.

“Instead, a focus on the company story and narrative messaging may be a good replacement for what you're trying to accomplish with a mission statement.”

On the flip side of the coin, when we spoke with a product marketer plying their trade in B2B IT SaaS, they still placed an emphasis on the importance of mission statements, saying:

“First of all, you can't do it on your own. In my experience, at least in startups, a mission statement has to proceed from a heart-felt place of conviction from the founders. It has to capture their spirit, why did they believe the company needed to exist? Because the mission statement is a big, ambitious goal type statement.

“A mission statement shouldn't live on its own, it should be part of a messaging architecture that is narrative-based. There should be a vision/purpose statement, a positioning statement, a category, etc. that proceeds from a core narrative. Interview sales, customer-facing technical people, customers if you can.

“I think a good exercise is to write a manifesto that describes the world, the key challenge, why it matters so much to the world, what's needed that drives why the company exists (some of the things in the article are good concepts/inputs to this).

“Also, try to capture the core narrative in 2 informal sentences, conversational style. You want to see that very concise version totally resonate, feel authentic and true to life, the problem the company is solving, and true to the company's products and capabilities. Get buy-in, validate internally with important representative stakeholders.”