Mission vs. Vision — Role of the Leader
In my last two postings, “No Vision = No Leadership” and “Communicating Your Vision”, I spoke about vision: what the leader would like their organization to be in the future. Please remember that there are subsets of vision, related to the organization’s products and services. These are all visions.
But sometimes the question comes up about a statement: is it a vision or a mission statement? And why should we care? What’s the difference? Both of them help guide the organization.
A vision statement provides a goal or destination for the organization. It is aspirational by definition. We are not there yet but that’s where we aim to be. It paints a picture of a destination for the organization to rally around.
A mission statement, in contrast, tells what the organization does, its purpose and reason for being. If the organization (team) doesn’t deliver on its mission, no one else may do it either.
An example most of us are familiar with is Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But what is its vision statement? Searching (“Googling”) it yields various answers but the most common I found was “to provide access to the world’s information in one click.” Note that the “one click” is the guiding light. Will the activities being done by people at…
