Mission and Vision
One question I get a lot is, “Does your mission come from your vision or does your vision come from your mission?”
The short answer is yes. They inform each other. I have a classmate in my DBA program who works for a nonprofit that provides affordable housing for low income people. They may start with a vision of “A house for everyone” that leads to a mission of “To provide affordable housing to low income people.” Or vice versa. The oder is not as important as the fact that your mission is what you plan to do to achieve your vision. They work together and feed off of each other. It really is not a which comes first question so much as it is a “Where are you going?” and “How do you plan to get there?” question.
Mission is the action oriented part of the equation. It is the statement that should be very action oriented. What do you do? How do you plan to achieve your vision? Like vision, it should exist for different areas of your life and or business. The mission may change over time as well. Going back to the example of a family vision that I discussed in the Vision blog. You might have a vision for your kids that is something like “Children who grow to become productive, caring adults.” With raising kids, the mission would change as they grow, and you might have different missions for kids at different stages. So with your kids in the early stages of infant through three years old, it may be to just keep them alive. You have to feed them and change them and then teach them to feed themselves and use the potty. Then as they get a little older, it may be to teach them how to interact and treat others. When they reach the adolescent years, it may be to help them get through school and into high school. When they become teenagers, it may just be not to kill them. So it can evolve as they evolve, but the vision remained constant throughout those years.
One of the most important things to understand with this is that your mission can and will change as things change. So write it in pencil if that helps. Erase it and rewrite it as necessary. It is not the Ten Commandments to be written in stone, but what it does do is guide you along the way and more important it helps you to guide your actions and decisions. Your mission is that thing where you can stop from time to time and ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing right now supporting my mission or hindering it?”
Mission and Vision work together. They inform each other. They support each other, and they somewhat define each other. They really should be this simple though as well. Easy to remember and to follow. They should leave room for growth and change without needing constant revision, but they can be revised. I think that is something a lot of people have issues with around this. They think that once it is done that they cannot change it. No. Change it if it needs to change. But also don’t make it so fluid that it loses its power.
As a coach, I help people to define their mission and vision for their life, their work, their business, their community, or whatever area they need help with. It can be tough sometimes for people to do this alone as they need to think about it, bounce ideas off someone, and get a bit of guidance through the process. But once you know how and understand the process and get that initial work done, things flow so much better as you ask yourself…Does this help me achieve my vision and drive my mission?
