Defining the core ethos, values, and future goals, anchoring your company's purpose and direction.
This document is designed to assist in creating compelling mission, vision, and values statements for startups. Understanding the purpose of each, and crafting these with a unique voice can be a powerful tool in building a sense of identity, and aligning teams towards common goals.
Mission statement
A mission statement defines the essence of an organisation, outlining its purpose – the reason it exists beyond making a difference. To create an impactful mission statement, insure there is reference to what the company does, who it serves, and the impact it aims to have.
Examples:
Vision
A vision statement paints a picture of the organisation's future, guiding its long-term aspirations. Crafting an effective vision statement involves being concise, unambiguous, futuristic, realistic, aspirational, and inspirational. Focus on specific outcomes relevant to the organisation.
Given the aspirational nature of both mission and vision statements, it’s possible to conflate them in the process of building. The best way to delineate the two is to consider the timeframe - a mission statement is related to the activities that you are doing now, while a vision statement is concerned with a future state.
Key questions to consider:
Examples:
Values
Company values are the fundamental beliefs that guide behaviour, culture, and decision-making. They reflect what the company prioritises and expects from employees. A memorable, actionable, and timeless values statement that anyone working in the company would be able to resonate with, is crucial. It is often said that values are what you “feel” being at a company. Although these can have an aspirational aspect to them, they must be able to be currently felt. I.e. you should not have a value such as “we value diversity” if you have no clear actions to improve diversity in your organisation or product. But you should have It, even if you are not a diverse founding team, but diversity is intrinsically important to you, your company, how you build your product, this is never going to change and you are putting every step in place to ensure diversity improves in the team.
The format of a value’s structure may vary, using one, two, or three words, or a short phrase. These should be clear, and concise.
Values are shared internally and externally to shape anyone’s experience and interactions with the company, from internal employees to external customers. You should embed them in your processes from writing job descriptions to interview questions formulated based on your values, to onboarding, performance management and built into your product.
Key questions to consider:
Examples:
Communicating and implementing
How to do this initially largely dependent on the stage of your company. These statements and beliefs must be both absorbed and enacted by your team - so who is involved in both creating them and ensuring they are incorporated into all your processes and daily life, depends on the size of your team.
If your team size permits it, it may of value to bring everyone along the journey, or at least to get their input - hold a group workshop, seek input from everyone, and then crystallise the key ideas. Although the founding team will want to ensure any solidifying of a mission, vision and values resonates with their perceptions and intended direction, it may be valuable to gauge the team’s thought and feelings, as they are the ones experiencing the company and its direction from the inside.
An alternative process can be presenting options to the team to get their input. If less input is desired you can decide independently and present to the team, with no collaborative input, and the fucus of this presentation should be buy-in, which means that you should communicate the narrative and thought process that went into creating your mission, vision, and values. It should feel natural to speak about these passionately - after all, they are the guiding voice behind why you exist.
Either way, once your mission, vision and values have been decided, your imperative is to ensure that these are well-communicated (website, presentations, marketing collateral, etc) and consistent.
Most importantly, your mission, vision, and values will only permeate into the fabric of your company to the extent that the Founder (and leadership team, if relevant) lives them. Otherwise, they are just words on a page.
Where to implement your mission, vision and values
To ensure your company's mission, vision, and values are effectively communicated and embedded into your culture, they should be integrated across multiple areas of the business. Here are some suggestions of where to implement them:
Making adjustments over time
Much like the process of building your mission, vision, and values for the first time, it can be worth periodically taking the time to question whether these statements still “fit” with your company as well as they used to.
No startup will experience a linear journey. New information will come to light, some initiatives will flourish, others will flounder, and your market dynamics will change. It may be that these dynamics will shift your core purpose and direction, and if so, your key statements should reflect that. Just be conscious that changes made too often or too suddenly can have an impact on the alignment and buy-in from your team.
This resource, and any guidance within it, must not be relied on as legal advice. We recommend that you seek professional advice to deliver an outcome best suited to your specific situation.
Defining the core ethos, values, and future goals, anchoring your company's purpose and direction.
This document is designed to assist in creating compelling mission, vision, and values statements for startups. Understanding the purpose of each, and crafting these with a unique voice can be a powerful tool in building a sense of identity, and aligning teams towards common goals.
Mission statement
A mission statement defines the essence of an organisation, outlining its purpose – the reason it exists beyond making a difference. To create an impactful mission statement, insure there is reference to what the company does, who it serves, and the impact it aims to have.
Examples:
Vision
A vision statement paints a picture of the organisation's future, guiding its long-term aspirations. Crafting an effective vision statement involves being concise, unambiguous, futuristic, realistic, aspirational, and inspirational. Focus on specific outcomes relevant to the organisation.
Given the aspirational nature of both mission and vision statements, it’s possible to conflate them in the process of building. The best way to delineate the two is to consider the timeframe - a mission statement is related to the activities that you are doing now, while a vision statement is concerned with a future state.
Key questions to consider:
Examples:
Values
Company values are the fundamental beliefs that guide behaviour, culture, and decision-making. They reflect what the company prioritises and expects from employees. A memorable, actionable, and timeless values statement that anyone working in the company would be able to resonate with, is crucial. It is often said that values are what you “feel” being at a company. Although these can have an aspirational aspect to them, they must be able to be currently felt. I.e. you should not have a value such as “we value diversity” if you have no clear actions to improve diversity in your organisation or product. But you should have It, even if you are not a diverse founding team, but diversity is intrinsically important to you, your company, how you build your product, this is never going to change and you are putting every step in place to ensure diversity improves in the team.
The format of a value’s structure may vary, using one, two, or three words, or a short phrase. These should be clear, and concise.
Values are shared internally and externally to shape anyone’s experience and interactions with the company, from internal employees to external customers. You should embed them in your processes from writing job descriptions to interview questions formulated based on your values, to onboarding, performance management and built into your product.
Key questions to consider:
Examples:
Communicating and implementing
How to do this initially largely dependent on the stage of your company. These statements and beliefs must be both absorbed and enacted by your team - so who is involved in both creating them and ensuring they are incorporated into all your processes and daily life, depends on the size of your team.
If your team size permits it, it may of value to bring everyone along the journey, or at least to get their input - hold a group workshop, seek input from everyone, and then crystallise the key ideas. Although the founding team will want to ensure any solidifying of a mission, vision and values resonates with their perceptions and intended direction, it may be valuable to gauge the team’s thought and feelings, as they are the ones experiencing the company and its direction from the inside.
An alternative process can be presenting options to the team to get their input. If less input is desired you can decide independently and present to the team, with no collaborative input, and the fucus of this presentation should be buy-in, which means that you should communicate the narrative and thought process that went into creating your mission, vision, and values. It should feel natural to speak about these passionately - after all, they are the guiding voice behind why you exist.
Either way, once your mission, vision and values have been decided, your imperative is to ensure that these are well-communicated (website, presentations, marketing collateral, etc) and consistent.
Most importantly, your mission, vision, and values will only permeate into the fabric of your company to the extent that the Founder (and leadership team, if relevant) lives them. Otherwise, they are just words on a page.
Where to implement your mission, vision and values
To ensure your company's mission, vision, and values are effectively communicated and embedded into your culture, they should be integrated across multiple areas of the business. Here are some suggestions of where to implement them:
Making adjustments over time
Much like the process of building your mission, vision, and values for the first time, it can be worth periodically taking the time to question whether these statements still “fit” with your company as well as they used to.
No startup will experience a linear journey. New information will come to light, some initiatives will flourish, others will flounder, and your market dynamics will change. It may be that these dynamics will shift your core purpose and direction, and if so, your key statements should reflect that. Just be conscious that changes made too often or too suddenly can have an impact on the alignment and buy-in from your team.
This resource, and any guidance within it, must not be relied on as legal advice. We recommend that you seek professional advice to deliver an outcome best suited to your specific situation.
%20(1).jpg)
.png)
.png)
%20(1).png)
