Purpose, Vision, and Mission: What’s the Difference?

Temps de lecture: 6 minutes

Today, it’s no longer enough for a company to exist just to exist. Customers, employees, and even investors want more than that: they want meaning, clarity, and direction. 🌟 Unfortunately, many companies aren’t transparent enough with their stakeholders. Take our latest study with Ipsos. It shows that over a quarter of employees find their company’s strategy for the coming 12 months unclear.

This is where three key concepts come into play: purpose, mission, and vision. Also known as “Why, How, What” and popularized by Simon Sinek as “The Golden Circle,” these concepts aren’t just buzzwords. They lie at the very foundations of successful business strategies! But if you want to make the most of them too, you first need to know how to distinguish them and use them correctly. 🔍

In this article, we explain why these terms are essential and how they can become your best allies for boosting your company’s performance. 🚀 Ready? Let’s get started!

A few definitions: what are purpose, vision, and mission?

Purpose: why your company exists

A company’s purpose is its DNA 🧬. In other words, it’s what justifies its existence in society, beyond the quest for profit. It’s its fundamental mission, the “why” of its existence.

Take the example of one of our customers! At Amnesty International, the aim is not just to raise awareness. Their purpose is “to make known and defend human rights.” This phrase sums up the very essence of their mission—oriented towards a goal that goes beyond mere militant action.

⚠️Careful: don’t confuse “purpose” with a simple marketing slogan. Your purpose should be genuine and directly linked to the company’s activity. A well-defined purpose serves as a strategic compass for all decisions.

🤔So, why do you exist? That’s the question every company needs to answer with sincerity and clarity.

Vision: where the company wants to go

Vision could be defined as the final destination of your journey. 🗺️ It represents the company’s ambitious goal for the future. It’s a projection into the future, an ideal that the organization aspires to reach, even if it seems far away. 🚀

Take Salesforce, the cloud-based customer relationship management platform. Their vision is clear: “We bring companies and customers together.” A simple mission—yet a powerful one!

This vision isn’t just for presentation purposes. It helps motivate and align teams in the same direction. 🧭

⚠️ Be careful not to define your vision on your own. Without the involvement and support of your teams, even the best vision is likely to have no impact.

Mission: how the company achieves its goals

The mission is the action plan that guides the company towards its vision. 📝 If the vision is your final destination, the mission is the path you take to get there.

IKEA, for example, has a very clear mission: “to offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.” This mission defines precisely how IKEA intends to realize its vision “to improve the everyday lives of as many people as possible.”

⚠️ Avoid the mistake of confusing mission and vision! Confusing these two concepts can make your strategies unclear and ineffective. 

3 reasons why these concepts are essential for business performance

• They give meaning to actions. A well-defined purpose motivates employees, giving real meaning to their work. By the end of 2022, 95% of managers felt it was important to do meaningful work. This strengthens their engagement and builds customer loyalty, creating a strong and inspiring your business culture. 🦸

• They align teams around a common vision. When everyone knows where they’re going, cohesion and collaboration within the company naturally improve. According to McKinsey, developing a culture of transparency by regularly sharing clear objectives and an inspiring vision is a lever for employee engagement and sustainable performance.
• They improve strategic decision-making. McKinsey research shows that clear direction and good leadership are, for 42% of employees, ideal for driving high-performance results. A clear mission guides company choices and keeps teams agile, focused on their purpose. 🎯

How do you define your company’s purpose, vision and mission?

Goal: define your purpose 🚀

To define your purpose, start with a three-step process:

• First, identify your core values. Ask yourself what really matters to you.
• Next, analyze your impact on society. What change do you want to bring about in the world?
• Finally, formulate a clear statement that sums up why you exist beyond profit. Ask yourself questions like: “Why do we do what we do? Why is it important? What motivates us every morning?”

By finding sincere answers, you’ll create a purpose that resonates with both your employees and your customers.

Develop an actionable mission 🚧

Your mission must be clear, concise, and ready for action. To achieve this:

• Put it in one or two sentences that describe exactly what your company does and how it does it.
• Be sure to include the following: specific objectives, target audience, and added value. A good mission statement might be, “Provide innovative time management solutions that increase team productivity.”

Keep in mind that a well-defined mission guides daily actions and lets teams know exactly what’s expected of them. 🎯

Build an inspiring vision 👷

To create an inspiring vision, you need to formulate a vision that is not just ambitious but also achievable. This order works best: 

• Start by imagining where you want to be in 5 to 10 years, and how that translates into concrete actions.
• Next, get your staff involved by inviting them to creative workshops where everyone can share their ideas. For example, organize brainstorming sessions to discuss future directions. Building your vision together is more motivating and engaging for the entire team!
• Lastly, give shape to your vision! Use various visualization techniques to bring your vision to life and make it accessible in a variety of ways. For example, you can create: a retroplanning or backward planning, a drawing, or an animation to illustrate your vision. 🎨🚀

Communicate effectively 🗣️

To centralize communication effectively and ensure that everyone remains aligned with your company’s purpose, vision, and mission, choose dedicated tools like Talkspirit and Holaspirit.

Talkspirit makes it all the more easier for your teams to exchange, collaborate, and engage with each other, thanks to:

• A news feed to keep you informed at all times,
• A welcome portal to share everything that brings your team together,
• A chat and videoconferencing tool to communicate in real time with your teams,
• Groups and publications to facilitate exchanges.
• And many more!

Holaspirit allows you to clearly visualize the purpose and objectives of each team, integrating these elements into your day-to-day work. For example, you can:

• clearly visualize roles, responsibilities, and accountability
• document your processes, strategies, policies, and team projects
• define OKRs (Objective and Key Results) so that all your employees are aligned with the same objectives and vision

Request a demo today and discover how Holaspirit can help you achieve your purpose, vision and mission! 👇

A final word

Now you have all the keys you need to understand why purpose, vision, and mission are essential pillars in driving your company’s performance. By giving every action clear meaning, you foster an environment where everyone knows why they get up in the morning and how they contribute day after working day to your collective success. In so doing, you boost your entire teams’ engagement, motivation, agility, and sense of belonging!

Transforming your organization doesn’t happen overnight. Before integrating these concepts into your overall strategy, start by choosing the organizational model that’s right for you. For guidance, check out our white paper on organizational models, co-authored with Nova Consul. 👇

Access White Paper

In our white paper “The Ultimate Guide to Organizational Models,” you’ll get: a comprehensive overview of innovative organizational models (like Agile, Teal, Holacracy, Constitutional Management, and more), testimonials from pioneer organizations that have successfully adopted it, best practices for choosing, implementing and measuring the effectiveness of our model, as well as digital tools to facilitate the transition.