A well-outlined strategic plan will be your road map to achieving success in your new venture. I talked about creating your vision statement in the last blog. Your vision statement is the celestial pie in the sky; your mission will tell you what you have to do or whom you have to be in order to obtain it. To review, a strategic plan should state your vision, mission, goals, strategies and tactics. This blog will help bring you a step closer to completing your strategic plan by providing tips on creating a mission statement.
If your vision is your dream, your mission is the tool that gets you there. Your mission is the action you will take to achieve your vision. It starts bringing clarity to what you are hoping to achieve. Here are a few tips I find useful to help create an effective mission statement:
- Look at the vision statement you created from the last blog’s exercise and then add I will do so by … then fill in the blank. For example: My vision is to solve world hunger. I will do so by feeding all the hungry people of the world.
- Your mission statement should be action-oriented. It should tell what you will do or who you will be.
- You mission statement should be clear and concise.
- Your mission statement should be self-explanatory. If your mission statement is clear:
- Potential customers can identify whether you are the company that can fulfill their needs.
- Potential partners can assess what you do and see if it may be a complement to their business offering.
- Potential employees can quickly assess whether your company is a viable option for employment.
- Vendors can recommend tools and services that might help improve your business operations.
I will walk through my mission statement:
Vision: By 2013, jowanna inc™ aspires to be a company known as THE firm aspiring entrepreneurs turn to in order to successfully plan and implement their startup and the firm those companies stay with in order to grow profitably in a controlled and sustainable manner.
I will do this by shortening the implementation time for the clients, making sure their strategic business plan is realistic yet reaching and ensuring that I share whatever I can along the way.
Here is the cleaned up version of the mission statement:
jowanna inc’s reason for existence is to contribute to the health of our economy by shortening the time it takes for startups to plan and implement sustainable businesses within the communities they aspire to serve. Our company will do this by empowering our clients through partnership and service. Our service will evolve with the changing needs of our clients.
Notice that the statement says who we want to be and how we will get there. It is more concrete than the vision but yet not tangible enough to apply direct metrics to it. When you attempt to write your statement, don’t worry about how it sounds—just write! You can refine your statement as you develop your plan. So we have the vision (the carrot) and a plan to get it. My next blog will start dealing with the meat and potatoes of the plan—the goals.
Please post comments or follow me on Facebook and I will happily help you through the challenges you might face when creating your plan. Your quest to business ownership will often leave you dazed and sometimes you won’t know whether you are coming or going—let your plan be the compass that will help you effectively mind your business!
Related Links
The Strategic Plan: Your Road Map to Excellence (Part 1 – Your Vision)
About the Author
Jowanna Parris-Daley owns and operates jowanna inc™, a small business consulting company that offers services that include business plan writing, e-consulting, website design and technology services for startup businesses.
No comments:
Post a Comment