Since I started my business study journey, I have always encountered the terms Purpose statements, Mission statements, Vision statements very cloudy statements. They can get cluttered fast.

Every organisation has a different method for declaring its purpose or mission. Some have mission statements, and others only have a sense of purpose. Some have both mission and vision. Thus whatever way they declare their intentions, I always found no reason to follow any of these 70s-80s Americanised business models/methods of expressing purpose. Isn’t it such an old-fashioned idea/system? Why do we still hold so strongly to the idea that someone decided that all organisations need a vision or a mission one day? I do not believe in a business where the vision is a mission with purpose or where these concepts are related to a statement that only ticks the corporate way of doing business and that some clever researcher has ingrained in us.

Even the fathers of management Henry Mintzberg and James Waters showed us in their 1985 Strategic Management Journal article “Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent” that there are another eight approaches to strategy. A mission-driven and vision-driven (Ideological & Entrepreneurial Strategies, respectively), this example shows that we can use many other methods (six to be exact) to communicate our purpose outside the mission and vision dilemma. 

If you go from organisation to organisation (especially within dance organisations) after a vision or mission adventure, you can get confused because of how definitions change from company to company. In the end, the message is the same, fancy words coated in a big pile of clutter.  

There’s a lot of clutter out there, let me tell you. 

But in this article, we’re going to cut through that clutter. And for the sake of “the way we do business today”, we’ll cover the differences between vision, mission and purpose for you to have a clearer idea of what to do and how to use them.

Thus before we do this, I want to introduce you to a statement that uncovers all of the below definitions. The idea of a “CAUSE”. In my opinion, having a Cause that is honest, meaningful, and that can be, as Simon Sinek puts it, “a specific vision of an ideal state of the future that inspires people” would be more than enough to start your business journey.

What Is A Vision Statement?

A vision statement is a statement of the future if the organisation is successful. It’s a statement of where you as a company are headed. A vision statement describes what the world will look like if you achieve the mission that serves your purpose – (Basically, it is your Cause).

And the thing about vision statements is that they are by nature aspirational. They are meant to inspire by depicting a future worth working towards. 

What Is A Mission Statement?

So if the vision statement answers what the world will look like in the future, your mission answers the question of how? 

“How are we going to make that vision a reality?” 

How are we going to behave in our business environment? 

How are we going to win customers? (and keep them) 

How do we define the objectives to measure whether we’re making progress?

Mission statements are there for you to talk about how lives are changed. 

(Basically, it is your Cause).

In summary, your vision is what the world will look like when you’ve achieved your mission. So if we have the “what” and “how”, where is the “why”?

What Is A Purpose Statement?

A purpose statement is in charge of explaining your organisation’s reason for existence. It explains why your organisation was created in the first place and the journey you want to go with it. A purpose statement can be the closest to our Cause statement as it’s a declarative statement that offers the same explanation of values and how the organisation’s existence will uphold those values.