Visions, Missions, Positioning, and other Statements

I never wanted to start a business. The thought of managing all the administrative stuff like accounting, legal, and other stuff turned me off. I like doing my job and focusing all of my energies there. Surprising as that’s what I am doing today… managing my own business.

It’s a one-person business and I manage taxes, accounting, and everything that comes with having a business. It’s worth it as the benefits outweigh the little annoyances. Taxes aren’t too bad. But Quickbooks drives me insane at times as I can’t get it to balance. Yet, I can balance the checkbook every month. I’m usually comfortable with the software, but not QB. It’s a meanie.

Back to business. I remember way back when a company I worked for came up with a mission statement. It printed colorful cards (credit card quality, not business card quality) and mouse pads for everyone in the department. Even with the portable mission statement, it wasn’t memorable. It used a lot of fancy words and sounded more like, “Blah blah blah.”

Let’s distinguish mission and vision statements with help from Wikipedia:

• A vision statement describes in graphic terms where the goal-setters want to see themselves in the future. It may describe how they see events unfolding over 10 or 20 years if everything goes exactly as hoped.
• Mission: purpose, reason for being.

In some cases, a slogan or tagline could count as a mission statement. There’s also positioning statement for more fun. The article defines it as “a one to two sentence statement that conveys what you do for whom, to uniquely solve an urgent need.”

Rarely do I see any of these statements done right. Most of the time, no one understands or remember the statement. Instead, I recommend coming up with a short and snappy tagline. Something that communicates what you do and the benefits. You can apply this concept with the above statements except try to make them memorable. Here are examples:

• “Helping children around the world read and learn.” Scholastic
• “Compressed knowledge.” getAbstract (provides abstracts of books)
• “Tools for healthier lives.” Mayo Clinic
• “For people who love to eat.” Epicurious

Mine? -gulp- “Content that inspires and informs.” Since I write and edit, content captures that. “Inspires action” was my attempt at showing the benefit. Businesses who hire writers and editors want the content to do something, not just sit there and be read. Right?