A Blueprint for building Mission, Vision and Values
By: Alyssa Feuerer
Tags: Startup, Values, Mission, Vision, Branding

One of the biggest challenges that developing brands face is culture and clarity of vision. In many circumstances, the vision of the company is in the founder’s mind and isn’t clearly shared or embraced by their team members. And therefore the resulting culture is a grab bag of what people may think it should be vs. a collective understanding that everyone has bought into. The foundation of any brand is critical to ensuring your team and your customers understand why you exist, what purpose you serve and why you should matter. For many employees, this is important stuff. They want to know what kind of work they are getting into beyond the specific job duties. We hear time and time again that younger workforce entrants are looking for companies that have shared values.

So what does that mean and what do you do about it?

It begs the question, have you taken a step back to look at your mission, vision and values? I’ve worked with partners to sharpen these pieces to the brand framework and it’s something that takes time, input from many people and multiple drafts before you nail it. There isn’t a formula for these things. You just know it when it feels right.

So, here’s a blueprint for how I work with my partners to redefine or refresh these elements of their brand framework.

Phase 1: Interview, survey, group discussion

Get input from as many people as possible. This is the most critical part. Listening. Looking for direction. Identifying consistent themes and ideas. Depending on how much time and how many people you are working with, this can take the form of interviews, group discussions or surveys. My ideal situation would be a group discussion with founders and brand leaders, followed by smaller group discussions or surveys with their team members. The more input you can gather from people beyond the founders or brand leaders, the better. This allows for a holistic understanding of what people understand of the brand today and then as you get further down the path of sharing out findings and recommendations, the likelihood of support will be easier because you have collected input from many individuals.

Here are six questions I would include in a team survey:

Why do you think [brand] exists? How do you describe what [brand] does when talking to your friends and family? What is the change you want to see in the [world/category/community] as a result of the work you are doing? What is something you believe most people do not understand about [brand]? What is one word you would use to describe what [brand] does? Please share a story that you feel captures the soul of [brand]. This can be a moment or project that you experienced personally or a story you are aware of within the company/organization.

These questions are a good baseline to see what team members believe and can give you a starting point for where the brand can go. And then, when you can do group discussions, you can dig a bit deeper.

Golden Circle exercise. Sure, it’s overused. But that’s because it works. Sit down with the right people and map out What does your product/service do?, How does it do that? Why do we do it? I find that giving the team time to write their ideas down on post-its and putting them all up on the wall to review together is a great way to share ideas, find themes and make sure everyone has a voice.

Illustration from Open Co.

Find your North Star. This can be more of a group thinking exercise. Working with your founders and leaders to answer what they want [organization/company] to be known for in the world? This may often include a lot of “whys” and “hows”. The goal here isn’t necessarily to get one clear answer, but identifying themes and directions that you can work with when you start to draft the brand framework.

Understanding your Brand Advantage. This can be more of a working discussion as well (again, post-its are great). I would frame up this discussion with questions such as: What does our customer want? What does our [brand/product] do? What does the customer get out of this? How does this make them feel? Gathering answers to each of these steps will help you to see where your most valuable benefit may lie. Sometimes your partners may already know this, but doing this thought exercise can either shed new light on the benefit or validate and allow you to move on. Spending some time dedicated to your audience is critical so that you are framing your brand language in a way that speaks to who you are serving vs. yourself.

What are your Guiding Values. This is usually the fun part of these working sessions. With the group, give each person some time to write down 3 values they believe the [company/organization] should stand behind. Share and discuss the values, cluster themes and use that as a starting point to define the Brand Values.

Values working session from a recent brand sprint

One other interesting exercise I like to use to partners to think creatively is writing a retirement letter from the future to their brand. This can be a way for your partners to step back from the standard talking points, add a bit of their own personality and really think about the future they would like to aim for. If you are in a working session, give the team a night to work on it and use this as the way to start the day in a fun way.

Phase 2: Writing the Mission, Vision and Values

Coming out of your working session and digging through your survey findings should give you an abundance of words and ideas to start with. As I start writing, I like to pull direct quotes from the surveys and use those as validation for my writing and even include them when I present the work.

When the time comes to start writing, I suggest starting with the mission statement. This can typically be the most clear cut and once it is in a good place, you can lean into it to build out a vision statement and then value statements that perfectly align.

One of the tricks with building the brand framework is to be succinct. Write the idea. Trim a couple words. Write it again. Simplify. Here are some of my favorite mission statements that show how less is better.

Life is Good: To spread the power of optimism.

TED: Spread ideas.

The Humane Society: Celebrating Animals, Confronting Cruelty.

ASOS: To become the number 1 fashion destination for 20-somethings globally.

Kickstarter: To help bring creative projects to life.

Below is a sample page for the foundational elements of a brand that I like to work out with my partners before we even get to talking about strategy. Once you have the mission, vision and values in a good place, it can then give you a new frame of reference to look at your brand positioning, personality, message strategy and other communications.

Simple framework for a brand

When you get to writing the Mission, Vision and Values, here is some guiding direction on how to frame the language and how they should be used. I often include these descriptions in my presentations back to my partners so they have a frame of reference for how to review the words on each page. It also helps if it gets passed around to other people when I’m not in the room.

Mission Statement

The mission statement describes your tangible work in the world — what it does, who it does it for, and how this helps people.

The mission statement should be ownable and differentiating in your category. This should be something that your teams reference when they are questioning or debating future projects, initiatives or significant changes in the organization.

Vision Statement

The vision statement articulates the your medium to long-term goals and aspirations, and if everything goes right, this is how the brand will impact the world.

The vision helps to provide a north star for your teams to see beyond day-to-day activity and understand the end goal of the mission in a clear, memorable way. It reminds you why you are here, what impact you want to make on the world and what you want to be known for. Usually when used for team building or culture building, it’s a good reminder of why they are in the place they are today and can jump start conversation and reflection.

Values

The core values describe the desired culture and can serve as a behavioral compass for your employees and the brand. The values can be used as the guiding principles that your company/organization uses to:

guide management during times of change define performance standards structure on-boarding guide decision making guide the brand identity and personality

Parting thought

This kind of work is so critical and very rewarding. Keep in mind that the more input you can gather upfront the better. It may even open up some opportunities and ideas for how to grow the brand internally or externally that you have not yet thought of.

I am always interested in learning about other methods for getting to the core of these elements, so if you have any other exercises or ways to work around the brand framework, I’d love to hear about it.